


Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Steerpike13713



Series: Morningstar Family Values [5]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018), Lucifer (TV), Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Betrayal, Chloe Decker Finds Out, Chloe Decker takes things badly, Episode: s02e17 Sympathy for the Goddess, Episode: s02e18 The Good the Bad and the Crispy, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Scheming, Trauma, and that is important, both real and perceived, but it's going to be important, here's the repercussions, or rather, seriously, she found out last time, this is not going to be a fun one people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 59,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24226015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: “Detective?”Chloe fumbled, and nearly dropped the phone. “What- I- Lucifer?” She could feel the blood draining from her face.He didn’t sound any different. Somehow, she’d expected he would. That, knowing, she’d hear...some kind of unnatural double-echo to his voice, some diabolic amusement in his usual carelessness. But there wasn’t anything. Just...Lucifer, sounding uncharacteristically serious.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Lucifer Morningstar
Series: Morningstar Family Values [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561111
Comments: 216
Kudos: 428





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok. A few advance notes.  
> While Chloe is not going to go quite as far as in canon...this is still going to test her and Lucifer almost to breaking point before I'm done here, and it's going to test a lot of other relationships too.  
> Chloe is having an absolute crisis right now, and is going to do so in some ways which aren't overwhelmingly sympathetic. With any luck, I've kept her likeable despite this, but it's a hard line to walk.

Reese Getty had been many things, but an entirely unbiased observer was not one of them. Chloe still believed that he’d told her everything he knew, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d been the one to put Trixie in danger in the first place, just to get at Sabrina. Whether or not Sabrina’s existence was really the trigger for the end of the world, and whatever she may or may not have been involved with back in Greendale - and Reese had made some decidedly disturbing implications about Mr Bartel the missing mall Santa, and a young man named Tommy Kinkle who had apparently been the only one to die in an accident in the Greendale Mines, he had no hard evidence that Sabrina was the guilty party there - there had to have been some better way to do it, that didn’t put her daughter in the firing-line.

Chloe didn’t care if the Order of the Innocents had been trying to save the world. She didn’t even care if killing Sabrina _would_ have saved the world. They’d dragged Trixie into this. They’d made her watch. They’d been about to kill Trix herself, from everything Trixie had let slip in between the free sessions Linda had insisted on giving them, out of guilt for her ex-husband’s role in the whole affair.

Chloe had tried to argue with that - this hadn’t been _Linda’s_ fault, and she was as affected by this as any of them - but honestly, she hadn’t pushed too hard. Trixie needed the help too much to refuse help when it was offered, Linda had promised her that Trixie’s sessions wouldn’t cut into her earnings too badly. She’d offered to refer Chloe to a colleague for treatment as well, and promised her door was always open if Chloe didn’t feel comfortable opening up to a stranger, but...well. Chloe didn’t want to imagine what Linda would make of Chloe having adopted Lucifer’s ‘metaphors’ for herself.

Because Lucifer was actually the Devil.

No matter how often Chloe turned that one over in her head, no matter how much research she did, or tried to do, she couldn’t make that add up.

Lucifer was...Lucifer. Insufferably self-centred, prideful, aloof, with a disturbing capacity for violence, undeniably bizarre...loyal beyond all reason, kinder than he was willing to admit to himself, and for all that terrible ease with violence, he had an exuberant, effervescent love of life that people couldn’t help getting swept up in, even against their better judgement.

It was hard to square that with...with any of what she’d read about the Devil. Not that there was much of a consensus about what that meant. Most modern churches had done away with the concept entirely, or at least the more marketable ones had done. That was probably part of why Lucifer had got away with it for so long-

God, he must have been laughing at her all this time, he’d told her to her face so many times what he was, and she’d never listened-

She’d thrown herself into finding out everything she could, after that night, even with Reese’s research having been taken as evidence in the FBI’s case against him, in which she fully expected to be called to testify before the month was out. And, evidence or not, she wasn’t going to rest easily until Reese Getty was safe behind bars, away from Trixie, and away from Linda. But beyond that...what she had were stories, folktales, legends...but there were some unifying features.

The Devil had once been the brightest and greatest of the angels, the Morning Star, but for his nebulously-defined pride he had been cast out of Heaven and imprisoned in Hell. According to some texts he ruled the place. According to others, he was just another prisoner there. What all of them agreed on, though, was his hatred of humanity for usurping his favoured place in God’s affections-

Except...except Lucifer _liked_ people, for the most part. Well, he liked sleeping with them, but more than that...he could be snarky, but he’d stop and talk to almost anyone, given the chance, and had a way of entering into people’s concerns almost as intensely as if they were his own. Granted, mostly as a way of working through his own issues, but his disgust at how Jana’s murderer had treated her had been entirely genuine, among any number of other cases.

But the literature had an answer for that too. Of course the Devil was charming. It was how he lured people in. There was story after story of him doing this, taking advantage of his understanding of humanity to trick people into signing over their souls in exchange for wishes that were inevitably twisted beyond all recognition, or cost far more than anyone was willing to pay.

Except that Lucifer had never seemed to understand humanity particularly well at all, and had repeatedly scoffed at the thought of buying or selling souls.

But, once again, the literature dashed her hopes. The Prince of Lies. That was what they called him. And that had to be a mistake, because Lucifer had never lied, even when it suited him, had corrected Chloe’s misapprehensions about his disappearance because he would not have her think more highly of him than he felt he deserved-

Unless all of that had just been the first, great lie. And she had fallen for it.

She hadn’t seen Lucifer since the day of the kidnapping. He hadn’t called her to force the issue. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to or not.

Maze had taken off again almost as soon as Sabrina and Trixie were safe, although before she went after this bounty in Nevada she’d promised to be home for a good few weeks before going on another jaunt that far afield. Chloe didn’t know where she’d gone now, except that a suspicious number of the congregation of the Church of the Repentant Innocents had tried to run after being placed on bail, and been dragged back screaming to every precinct in the city but Chloe’s. Some of them had been missing more than fingers when they got there, too.

None of it had been fair on Trixie. None of this had been fair on Trixie right from the start, because when half of her support system consisted of fiends from the Pit that may or may not be trying to steal all of their souls, what did that say about Chloe’s parenting? She’d been trying to encourage Trixie to try socialising again with the girls in her own year she’d been friendly with, before all of this started, but so far Trixie was proving resistant to the idea. She wanted to see Sabrina again. It wasn’t even hard to understand why. Sabrina had protected her during their ordeal, or so Trixie said. She’d even done her best to divert their captors’ attention from Trixie and onto herself, no matter what the consequences. They’d nearly killed her for it. And, in turn, she had killed them.

Chloe couldn’t square that with what information Reese Getty had been able to gather on the cult Sabrina had grown up in. Or with what she’d seen in the church when she’d burst in, the fire and the death and the screaming. But she couldn’t ignore it forever, either.

She just thought she’d have a little more time than she did before the phone call came.

If she’d known it was Lucifer calling, she’d probably have just let it ring. If it had been Sabrina...she honestly didn’t know. 

As it was, the number was an unlisted one, but when she answered, it was Lucifer’s voice that said:

“Detective?”

Chloe fumbled, and nearly dropped the phone. “What- I- Lucifer?” She could feel the blood draining from her face. 

He didn’t sound any different. Somehow, she’d expected he would. That, knowing, she’d hear...some kind of unnatural double-echo to his voice, some diabolic amusement in his usual carelessness. But there wasn’t anything. Just...Lucifer, sounding uncharacteristically serious.

“Lucifer, I can’t-”

“I apologise for calling, Detective,” Lucifer’s voice sounded strained, worried, and something in Chloe snapped to attention at the sound of it. “But we’ve got a rather serious situation here. A man is dead. And, more pressingly, whatever he was carrying is also gone.”

“What do you mean ‘more pressingly’. What- What was he carrying?”

“I don’t know. Amenadiel said something about something that would let her return home, but I wasn’t paying attention, and- Yes, all right, brother! Apparently it’s some kind of artefact. Ancient Sumerian. Mum thinks it’ll give her the secret of how to return to Heaven, which would not be good for anyone down here now she knows there are still nephilim running around!”

There was so much of that that she couldn’t even begin to understand. Starting with the existence of Lucifer’s mysterious mother, which none of the religious texts she’d found had even hinted at.

“You...want to find this thing for her?” Chloe asked, her voice harsh.

“What? No! No, I want to find this thing _before_ Mum does, because if you thought the _first_ lot of plagues and floods were bad it is going to be nothing to what she’ll try this time around.”

For a moment, Chloe couldn’t process it, but then-

If Lucifer’s Mother was God - there had been a few theological rabbit-holes she’d gone down that postulated a female God, or one that was both male and female at once, and at this point Chloe didn’t know how _anything_ worked, so why not? - then...why would God need some ancient Sumerian artefact to return to Heaven?

“Your mom as in...God?” she hazarded, still a little overwhelmed.

“God _dess_ , Detective. Dad’s still in His Heaven. All's a very long way from right with the world. I tell you, Robert Browning clearly didn’t get out much if he was able to write _that_ with a straight face…”

“...there are two of them.”

This was absurd. Why was she- Why hadn’t anyone known about this? Was there some obscure text somewhere she’d missed? It wasn’t as though she could do much in the way of research from where she was now.

“ _Yes_ . And much as I might enjoy seeing her and Dad tear each other to pieces, there’s always a chance that she might win, so I’ll choose the lesser of two evils...or at least the less likely to drown the entire continental US to dispose of any more unwanted grandchildren. But I need _you_ to investigate this case. I’ll text you the address.”

Chloe’s hands were shaking. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to have to deal with this, but-

 _The less likely to drown the entire continental US._ Even if Lucifer was lying - he could be, she reminded himself, he was the Father of Lies, or so all her sources said, even if she couldn’t name a single time he’d directly lied to her - she couldn’t take chances with a risk like that.

“I’ll be right there.”

* * *

The body couldn’t have been dead for more than an hour, and belonged to one Zeke Moore, a manager at an import-export company. And since Lucifer and Amenadiel both reported having seen the man meeting with Charlotte Richards minutes before he was killed, Chloe was going to bet it was related. All the moreso, if Charlotte really was working for their mother, although what a shady defence lawyer was doing working for a literal goddess was another question again.

That brought her mind screeching up against yet another issue. Their mother. They were brothers. So Amenadiel was...what? An angel? A demon? Something between the two?

She shook her head. She could deal with that later. For now, the scene was what mattered.

“So,” she asked, turning to a new page of her notebook and trying not to stare too obviously at Amenadiel. She couldn’t picture him as a demon. As an angel...it was closer, but...if he were an angel, why was he still on good terms with Lucifer? Or...better terms than he had been, at least. “Why did you and Lucifer come back here, exactly?”

Amenadiel blinked at her. “...well, we knew that our mother at least thought he had something she needed. Lucifer suspected a con, since she paid him before he produced any proof, and so we went to confront him.”

“Is there...any chance that Lucifer might be responsible for this?” Chloe asked, her heart pounding, “I mean...if he didn’t want...whatever this man was carrying...to reach your mother?”  
“What- No. No, that’s impossible. You know Lucifer, he’s not a killer.”

It even sounded like he believed it. But- Amenadiel was Lucifer’s brother. If that was true...could he be trusted? Six hundred and sixty-six angels had fallen with Lucifer, according to some of the texts she’d read. There hadn’t been an ‘Amenadiel’ on any of the lists she’d seen, but then, she hadn’t found mention of any Amenadiel but the one she knew anywhere.

“I have to ask,” she reminded him.

Amenadiel shrugged. “He was with me the whole time. And if he was guilty, why would he call you?”

Because he knew he could easily deceive her? He’d done it before. God, she’d been so _stupid_ -

“Where is he, anyway?” she asked instead. 

Amenadiel glanced around. “He was here a second ago…” he paused. “...I know you two had some kind of falling out after the kidnapping.”

“You could say that,” Chloe said brittlely.

Amenadiel nodded, “I know it can be...hard. Humans aren’t really psychologically equipped to handle divinity. I remember Father went through five Adams before He figured that one out.”

Chloe’s skin crawled. Five Adams. What had happened to them?

“But you _know_ Lucifer,” Amenadiel went on. “He hasn’t changed just because you know a little more about him.”

Chloe stared down at her notepad. “Let’s just...keep to the facts, shall we. So, Ella’s going over the body now, but can you tell me anything more about the scene? Did you see anyone there?”

“No. Just the body.”

“Is there any chance that your mother was behind this?”

“No.” Amenadiel shook his head. “That is...I have...recently been forced to acknowledge that our mother has no real respect for human life. But that doesn’t mean she kills indiscriminately. She wouldn’t have disposed of this man until after she had what she wanted.”

A chill went up Chloe’s spine.

“But...if she had what she wanted...then she would’ve killed him?”

Amenadiel looked pained, but nodded. “But she’d only just paid him when Lucifer and I tailed him back here. Mom was still at her table. And she’s not...Mom doesn’t use catspaws. She’s too powerful to have ever needed to before.”

That was hardly comforting news.

“How...how powerful are we talking, here?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“She’s the Goddess of Creation.” Amenadiel shrugged. “She’s as powerful as Dad, in her true form. It could have been either one of them who imprisoned the other in Hell. Dad wouldn’t have won, if Michael hadn’t always been closer to him than he was to Mom, and Lucifer hadn’t stayed out of it.”

“But…” Chloe fumbled for some fragments of rationality. “But...if she’s _omnipotent_ , then why-”

“Well, she isn’t,” Amenadiel admitted. “Not any more. Not since Hell. That place changes everyone who sets foot there, in one way or another.”

“Including Lucifer?”

For a moment, Amenadiel looked almost guilty. And then, slowly, jerkily, he nodded.

“Yes. Including Lucifer. I didn’t realise how badly it affected him until...until that night at the auction. When I could finally recognise my little brother again. And then I shut my eyes all over again to what I was asking him to do to please our absent father.”

It felt- Wrong. Uncomfortable. Hearing it all laid out like this. This wasn’t- This wasn’t something Chloe should be party to, but...if Amenadiel was an actual _angel_ , and he could vouch for Lucifer…unless…

Chloe had talked to friends, siblings, parents of killers before. Nine times out of ten, they had no idea that the person they loved was capable of whatever crime they’d committed. She’d been the oblivious loved one once already. Who was to say Amenadiel was immune? She didn’t know. She didn’t _want_ to believe that Lucifer was capable of being what the stories painted him as...but Amenadiel himself admitted that Hell had changed Lucifer. He had never specified how.

“...was there anything else that stood out about this deal? Who else knew about it.”

“Mom isn’t exactly the sharing type,” Amenadiel said ruefully. “I found out about it before we had our...disagreement...about Sabrina.”

Chloe’s stomach lurched. Their disagreement. Because Sabrina’s grandmother had wanted her dead since she arrived in LA, and Amenadiel had made excuses for her right up until they’d thought the abduction was her finally getting around to it.

She couldn’t- No. She could all too easily picture Sabrina dead. Her fair hair clotted with blood, those brown eyes - so much like her father’s - dull and filmy and sightless. She’d been picturing nothing but Trixie and Sabrina, and every terrible thing that might have happened to them, ever since she and Lucifer had come back from a case to find their daughters missing.

She didn’t...even if Sabrina _was_ destined to bring about the apocalypse, even if she was guilty of everything that Reese Getty had said she was, tenuous as some of those links had seemed before Chloe had seen what she was capable of...that never meant that Chloe had ever wanted her _dead_.

Amenadiel was still talking, and Chloe refocused on that, trying to force the image of those dead eyes out of her mind’s eye.

“-but Lucifer has been out of the loop since he came back from Massachusetts, and Mom doesn’t really have anyone else on Earth but Dan.”

Chloe stared at him. “...Dan?” she repeated, hollowly.

“Yeah.” Amenadiel even looked slightly puzzled. And...sickened. “I...don’t particularly want to know the details of their...relationship, but…”

“Their…” Chloe broke off. “But he’s with…” 

With Charlotte.

Whom Lucifer had claimed was working for his mother. 

Had that been true? Or- The Lucifer she thought she knew wouldn’t make up something like that just to torture Dan. Or at least - Not the way he had done, and not for so long, when there was so much else at stake. But...how much of the man she’d thought she knew was even real?

Amenadiel had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought Lucifer would have filled you in, if he’s willing to trust you with this. Our mother has been possessing Charlotte Richards ever since the original woman was the victim of a murder.”

For a moment, Chloe couldn’t grasp it, and then.

“So- Charlotte’s dead. Wait. Your mother can-”

She felt like an idiot for not working it out sooner, demonic possession had made up half of the more modern documented evidence on most of the sites she’d found that talked about the Devil more seriously.

Oh.

Oh, god.

Was- Was that what all of them were doing? Lucifer, Amenadiel, Maze? It would make sense.If divinity really was too much for humans...she’d read a lot of strange things about angels since that day at the church. None of the descriptions had sounded particularly humanoid. Wheels of flaming eyes and multiple heads and faces and a hundred other configurations that sounded like something out of a nightmare. 

“Only the recently dead,” Amenadiel said hastily. “I promise you, Chloe, wherever Charlotte Richardson is now, that mortal body no longer contains her soul.”

Chloe wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. On the one hand, at least the original Charlotte Richards, whatever Chloe had thought of her, wasn’t trapped, helpless, a passenger in her own body, but...she was dead. She’d been dead for months, and a goddess was wearing her skin and living her life, and maybe that wouldn’t hurt Charlotte herself anymore, but her family? Her friends? They would never know why the person they knew had changed so entirely. Chloe tried to imagine what it would have been like if her dad had survived that bullet, only to come back as someone else entirely - and someone who regarded humans as...what, she wasn’t sure, but certainly nothing like equals.

“Is that...are you…” Chloe started, her stomach churning, not sure what she’d do if Amenadiel said ‘yes’.

“No!” Amenadiel looked startled...but not horrified. “No. I mean...we wouldn’t be much good as messengers if we terrorised every human we came across, now, would we? I mean...some of us are odder-looking than others, but we can all take a human form when we need one.”

That...wasn’t what the literature had said. But here, standing in front of her, was a real, live angel. Chloe was a detective, not a researcher, but she was fairly certain that first-hand testimony was superior to hearsay, and what was the literature, really, but centuries’ worth of hearsay. Except…

“And Lucifer?” she asked, her voice hard. “And Sabrina?”

Amenadiel shifted. “That...is really something you ought to talk to him about. Sabrina...had a human mother. That’s all I can really tell you.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, and it set the hairs on the back of Chloe’s neck on end. It could be nothing. She might well just be paranoid. But…no. You couldn’t ask a suspect’s _brother_ if they were truly guilty, and expect an entirely honest answer, and that was the only framework Chloe had for this.

And, whether or not the investigation of his murder was a plot by the Devil...a man was still dead. Chloe was a homicide detective, and there was a job in front of her that needed to be done.

“Hey!” Ella called from behind Amenadiel, sticking her head around the open door. “I am being very impressive over here, and Lucifer’s already wandered off instead of staying and being properly impressed!”

Chloe snorted. “So you’re trying to take over his role as the ego destabilising this whole crime scene?”

“It isn’t the same without him,” Ella said, a little mournfully. “And he’s back, but not...properly, so…” she paused. “He and Sabrina bearing up okay? After...everything?”

“I don’t know,” Chloe said shortly. “The body?”

“Oh, right. We’re running tests for gunshot residue and cocaine. Should have those in, like, five minutes, but, anyway...poor Zeke here got shot twice. First in the thigh - bullet winged him - and then another went through his hand, hitting him in the chest. Probably trying to defend himself.” Ella gave a rueful smile. “Too bad you can’t catch bullets.”

“Well, _he_ can’t, maybe,” said a familiar voice from just behind Chloe’s ear. She jumped. She couldn’t help it, even if she was used to Lucifer’s sudden appearances and disappearances by now.

“Lucifer!” she snapped, slightly breathless. “How- Where were you?”

Lucifer waved his phone. “Calling Doctor Linda, to tell her I’ll be late picking my spawn up from her session this afternoon. So. What do you make of this, Detective?”

He was acting just like his usual self- No, he was acting _too much_ like his usual self. Overplaying the role, a small, scared, cynical part of Chloe’s brain hissed. She’d seen the mask slip, and now he was working overtime to keep it in place-

But his smile, when she looked around at him, was uncharacteristically nervous, and it wasn’t unusual, after all, to go overboard in trying to get back to normal after a traumatic experience-

Except, in this situation ‘not unusual’ was the biggest warning sign Chloe could look for. Except she wasn’t dealing with human beings. Except, that was what she’d have told herself before, and now she couldn’t believe she’d ever been so gullible.

“I-” she started. “I don’t think this was a professional hit. Maybe a robbery gone wrong?”

And if that was so...then who was to say Lucifer hadn’t been behind the robbery? Or his mother hadn’t. Amenadiel said she didn’t use catspaws, though, but Lucifer...Lucifer used nothing else. All those favours people owed him...it would have been so, so very easy to arrange this...but then why bring her into it at all?

“Anything is possible, but...any idea what they were after?” Lucifer asked, glancing over at Ella.

It wasn’t technically a lie, even, something in the back of Chloe’s mind noted clinically. He’d never said, after all, that he _didn’t_ know.

Ella shrugged. “Well, trace elements point to cash, cocaine, gunpowder residue indicating weapons...all your basic bad-guy stuff.”

“Clay tablets?” Lucifer suggested. “Papyrus...well, you never know, could be a later copy,” he added, at the look Amenadiel shot at him.

“Nope.” Ella said brightly. “No sign of that. _Or_ any sign of forced entry.”

“Which means the killer either knew the combination or just waited for the vic to open it to strike,” Chloe filled in.

“Mm-hm,” Ella agreed, and then leaned down to look at something underneath the safe-deposit box. “Hey, I got something here!” She leaned still further, shining her flashlight into the darkness beneath the safes and retrieving- “Cell phone,” Ella said brightly, grinning around at them. “No dust on it, so it hasn’t been there long.”

It took a moment for that to sink in.

“Well, Zeke had his phone on him…” Chloe said slowly. “So...this one could be the killer’s. Maybe he dropped it during the fight or just didn’t have time to retrieve it?”

“Passcode protected, of course,” Ella said, jabbing at the screen, “But the home screen is...two eyes?”

“Somebody’s perfectly freckled posterior?” Lucifer suggested, leaning over to take a look. Chloe would’ve elbowed him, almost made to elbow him, but then...the Devil. She was about to elbow the Devil, and who could say, when they got past the passcode, whether or not they’d find a little anonymous text message from an unlisted number, reminding Zeke Moore’s killer of their _deal_.

“So,” she said, struggling to regain her hold on the situation. “Our best lead on the killer is a pair of...butt eyes. It’s a great start.”

“We’ve had worse,” Lucifer said, a little too breezily even for him. Chloe glanced sideways at him. His expression was...perfectly normal, amused and interested. His eyes, though...they were almost black with fury, fixed on the body, and for a moment they seemed - no, not seemed, she was past that now. They glowed red, like a pair of burning coals, incongruous in his face, and Chloe almost flinched back at the heat in them.

“Okay, well...if that’s all here, we should get back to the precinct,” she said, dragging her eyes away from Lucifer’s, and trying to cling onto some sense of equilibrium. “Start running down leads. There are bound to be at least a couple sets of prints on that phone, anyway.”

“Excellent idea, Detective!” Lucifer agreed, and stepped smartly aside to let her past, falling in seamlessly behind her, just the way he had always done before. It felt...wrong, that she should still be this automatically comfortable having him there, at her back, now that she knew what he was, but somehow, absurdly, she still felt better for having him there.

* * *

Charlotte Richards was already at the precinct when they got there, apparently busily chatting up Dan.

Except that it wasn’t Charlotte Richards. It was Lucifer’s mother, the Goddess of Creation, possessing the body of a woman who had been dead for months now without anyone ever noticing she was gone. Chloe screeched to a halt at the sight of her, half-expecting Lucifer to collide with her back. He didn’t, but she heard a faint hiss behind her like an angry teakettle. Apparently Lucifer wasn’t the only one who’d thought of using his connections with the LAPD to steer this case.

“Charlotte,” Chloe said shortly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m _concerned_ , of course!” the Goddess said, sickly sweet in a way Charlotte Richards never had been. “Mr Moore _was_ my client, after all.”

Chloe’s world might have been entirely upended, but...she could smell a rat there.

“...why would _you_ be representing Zeke Moore, a manager at an import-export company?” she demanded. It didn’t sound like the sort of thing a literal goddess on Earth would concern herself with.  
“Because he works for Bianca Ruiz.”

“The tequila magnate?” Lucifer asked, from just behind Chloe’s left shoulder, sounding honestly baffled. Chloe couldn’t blame him. Bianca Ruiz was the worst of the worst, yet...but would that concern a goddess either? And...how could Lucifer not _know_ what Bianca was? Quite aside from the connections she’d already known about...he was the Devil. Human evil was, in theory, all his idea in the first place…

Except that Lucifer had always seemed as revolted by corruption and dishonesty as Chloe was. Except that if that was the case...why solve murders at all?

“Who do you think was responsible for this?” the Goddess pressed. “A rival of some sort?”

A goddess. A literal goddess. Capital-G Goddess, even, was standing in the precinct and asking about a murder because she defended a gunrunner, drugrunner, human trafficker and murderer in court. And she was- she seemed so _small_ , suddenly, next to the sound and fury of the church, the epic scale of every account Chloe could turn up about all of this. This was a Goddess? _The_ Goddess? It was hard to attribute omnipotence to a defence attorney who needed to resort to showing Dan a bit of leg to get the information she needed. And, if she were omniscient...why would she need to? Amenadiel said she’d been diminished in power since being imprisoned in Hell - what for?

Chloe felt like she was drowning in information that didn’t add up, or which she only had fragments of, and none of her sources to learn more could be relied upon at all.

In the absence of anything else to do, she fell back on what she knew.

“Good question,” she said shortly. Would it be more or less dangerous to have both Lucifer and his mother interfering with this case? Or- How much more damage could it cause, to have them outside the investigation, both running plots of their own to get...whatever it was they wanted out of this.

Lucifer claimed his mother wanted...something...that would allow her to return to Heaven. It was only logical to assume it would do the same for Lucifer, and then...the Devil had been an angel, once, and had rebelled against God. Was this- Was this all just Lucifer gearing up, ready for a second round?

And if he was...what would that mean for everyone on Earth? Even if she could have still believed Lucifer was what she had thought he was, she wouldn’t have wanted to hand him absolute power. Now...now, she didn’t know what he was, except that he was dangerous.

On some level, she had always known that much.

“Guys!” Ella called, sticking her head out of one of the conference rooms. “I think I’ve figured out what the butt-eyes really are.”

It was the distraction Chloe needed.

Ella had a laptop open on the table, and music was blaring out of the speakers. Really, _really_ terrible music.

“You guys, it’s a record label,” she said brightly, “The symbol on the phone we found is the label’s logo!”

“And they choose to publish this music of their own free will?” Lucifer asked, grimacing.

“It’s a vanity label,” Ella explained. “It exists only to make this one guy’s music.”

Chloe nodded. “Okay, well...who owns it? And can you _please_ turn it off.”

“Chet Ruiz.”

The Goddess nodded, having trailed Dan in before Chloe could stop her. “Bianca’s youngest son,” she said quietly, “Half our billing goes to keeping him out of jail.”

Charlotte Richards, the Charlotte Richards Chloe had occasionally crossed paths and swords with, would never have given away information like that. God, how had she not noticed this sooner?

“So,” Chloe said, trying to make all of this seem rational. “Bianca’s own son robbed and killed one of her most loyal soldiers?”

Even in this strange new world she’d found herself in, that didn’t make much sense.

“And, more to the point,” Lucifer put in, eyeing the website thoughtfully, “This sadly untalented individual’s mother bought him a record label all to himself? I didn’t know that was an option. Good seventeenth birthday present material, would you say?”

Dan made a strangled noise, and Ella snickered.

“I’ve heard Sabrina sing karaoke,” she said, grinning, “So it’d be a step up, but...does she even _want_ a record label?”

“No idea,” Lucifer said, looking momentarily crestfallen. “I’ll have to ask her.”

Chloe was still reeling from the _normality_ of it all, when she caught sight of Charlotte Richards’ face, twisted into an expression of such inhuman fury that it left Chloe cold. For the first time, she had no problem believing that this...woman? Entity? Whatever it was that occupied Charlotte Richards’ body, it wanted Sabrina Spellman dead. Not for anything she had or had not done, but for the simple fact of her existence.

Chloe...couldn’t fathom it, even as she remembered all those cases Reese Getty had laid out for her, all the horrors Sabrina might have been privy to.

“I wouldn’t do it,” Dan put in, “I mean...either she’s good, and she can get in somewhere decent, or she isn’t, and she won’t want her embarrassing teenage music videos all over the web. Haven’t you ever heard of the Friday video and how that went down? Besides. Are you really telling me you don’t have connections in the major record labels? Arrange an introduction or something.”

“Yes. You do _remember_ that the last person I did that for ended up dead?”

“Dan,” Chloe cut in quickly, before Dan could reply. “The case?”

“What- Oh, right. Uh...nothing on Chet in any of the files. I didn’t know he was actually part of the family business.”

“He’s not,” the Goddess supplied quickly. “Bianca tries to keep him as far away from it all as possible.”

Yet another scrap of information that the real Charlotte Richards would never have shared. But then, what did the maintenance of Charlotte Richards’ bank account or Bianca Ruiz’s empire matter to a goddess?

“So, whatever it was that this guy was carrying,” Chloe said slowly. “It mattered to Chet as much as to-” to you, she almost said.

Dan frowned at her. “That’s...a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” he said dubiously. “I mean...Bianca Ruiz’s kid has enough money to buy and sell this guy and everything he was carrying ten times over.”

“ _Almost_ everything,” the Goddess muttered. “I still don’t know how you were able to respond so fast.”

“Murder that close to a crowded restaurant,” Chloe said, as neutrally as she could manage. She didn’t know that she trusted Lucifer yet, but she wasn’t going to trust his mother either. Even if she was opposed to him...she couldn’t take the risk that he’d been telling the truth, and this woman was indeed responsible for a flood that was supposed to have drowned the whole world, and meant to do it again. “Someone was bound to notice. I just happened to get handed the case.” She bulled on before the Goddess could question her further. “Okay, Dan, do you have any other theories?”

Dan shrugged. “Kid got resentful at being edged out of the family business and decided to make a play?”

“Then dropped his phone, proving just how right his mother was about him?” Lucifer put in, laughing softly.

Chloe ignored him, already running through the consequences in her head. “Well, if Chet is the killer...this could be our chance to take down Bianca as well. Cut off the head of her entire operation.” If Lucifer really was the mastermind her research had made him out to be - difficult as that was to believe, with him standing in front of her, the same ridiculous careless man she’d thought she knew - she could well believe him capable of engineering that. What she didn’t know was why he’d _care_. Before, she wouldn’t even have questioned it. Lucifer, the Lucifer she’d thought she knew, cared. About justice, even if he said all he wanted was punishment for the guilty. About victims, even if their deaths seemed on the surface to leave him quite unmoved. About all the casual conquests she’d resented and envied all at once, even if she hadn’t been able to see it at the time. She didn’t want to believe it had all been a lie. But she hadn’t wanted to believe Dan was dirty either, and how much pain and trouble had that caused her?

“Yeah,” Ella put in. “Bummer is, the phone proves that Chet was in the room but doesn’t definitively tie him to the murder.”

Chloe gave a curt nod. “Dan, why don’t you work on hacking the passcode. I’ll have a chat with Chet. Charlotte-” it felt jarring to use the name, now she knew how false it was, but she pushed on anyway. “Thank you so much for your help, but...but now that one of your clients is our main suspect, it’s best you go.”

If Chloe had still thought the Goddess was just a mortal defence attorney, she’d have steered her out physically as she talked. As it was, Chloe didn’t quite dare.

The Goddess crossed her arms. “I don’t think I have to go quite yet,” she said, a little peevishly.

“Maybe not, but I think you should.”

“Bianca’s having a party today,” the Goddess said quickly, just as Chloe was starting to consider moving out of the conference room altogether, just in case she couldn’t physically move an entity that had created the entire universe. “It’s the launch of her new tequila. I’m sure Chet will be there, _and_ I’m invited.”

Even knowing that this was likely just another part of the scheme...it was too good an opportunity to miss. Chloe...Chloe didn’t know if it was more dangerous to let Lucifer or his mother get their hands on whatever this thing was that they needed so desperately. But she knew what Bianca Ruiz was, and how many people were hurt every day because of it.

“It would be a good chance for us to go undercover,” Dan said, glancing over at...at the Goddess. Her ex-husband was sleeping with the Goddess of All Creation. Who was also Lucifer’s mother.

“All right,” Chloe said grudgingly, because if they were going to have a shot at taking down Bianca Ruiz, she almost didn’t care what else got in the way. “All right.”  
“Are you sure about that, Detective?” Lucifer asked, and the look he cast at his mother then was venomous. “I’m sure I have a few strings to pull who might be able to get us in without relying on anyone whose motives are so blatantly-”

“Hey, lay off, man!” Dan snapped. “I know you’ve got some kind of grudge, but Charlotte’s going against her own interests to help us out-”

“Is she _really_ ? I’d have thought even you would have worked out how suspicious _that_ is-”

“Lucifer,” Chloe snapped. “That...I need a word. Outside.”

Lucifer blinked. “...as you wish, Detective,” he said, deceptively mild, almost bemused, and stepped aside to let her out before following her.

“I need you to leave,” Chloe said shortly, as soon as they were alone.  
“What- But, Detective-”

“Lucifer. I don’t- I don’t know what it is you’re planning, or why you brought me in on this-”

“I brought you in because you’re the best hope we have of seeing this case _solved_!” Lucifer snapped. “Since I have yet to revise my opinion that the rest of the LAPD is either hopelessly corrupt or so incompentent they couldn’t find their own arses without a map and a Sherpa!”

“That’s not-” _fair_ , was what Chloe had meant to say, but the last word caught in her throat. Palmetto, after all, had put the lie to most of that. “Okay, so I’m on the case now. Job done.”

“Job very much _not_ done!” Lucifer protested. “As we still haven’t found this late ancient Sumerian artefact dealer’s killer _or_ the artefact itself yet.”

Well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what his priorities were.

“How is Amenadiel involved with all this, exactly?”

That brought Lucifer up short. “Amenadiel? He’s...after what happened with Sabrina, he’s not exactly keen on the idea of letting Mum go back to Heaven either, and apparently she needs this artefact, whatever it is, to do it. It can’t be Gabriel’s horn, as I’ve already got that. Not likely to be Azrael’s blade either, since I’ve got that too. Raphael’s staff is unlikely, given how tightly he tends to cling onto it, and anyway I’m not sure healing is what Mum’s going for here…”

“How...how do you have all this stuff?” Chloe asked, a horrible suspicion growing in her.

“It’s not as though I’m doing it on purpose. Honestly, you’d think Upstairs was leaving them around just for the hell of it, at this rate. Azrael’s blade caused all that trouble we had a few months ago, remember? That rash of stabbings? And I picked up Gabriel’s horn in Greendale, since you can’t really have an apocalypse without it.”

Chloe had been about to ask about the blade, and whether it was true that it had been what caused that inexplicable rash of murders that had so baffled half the precinct and even the killers themselves, but all thought of that went out of her mind in a rush at Lucifer’s last words.

“...so it’s true,” she breathed, hardly daring to put the thought into words. “That really is what you’re here for.”

Lucifer gaped at her. “What- Detective-” 

“I- I have to get back to the case,” Chloe said quickly, pulling away. “I can’t...you’re too close to this-”

“Well, that’s never stopped either of us before-”

“ _Lucifer_. Go.”

Lucifer went still, the careful stillness of a big cat about to pounce. His eyes, black now almost from edge to edge, found hers.

“Detective, you can’t seriously believe-”

“Believe what?” Chloe snapped. “That you are exactly who - and what - you say you are? That you just admitted to plotting to cause the end of the world-”  
“That isn’t what I-”

“Is Sabrina in on it?”

Chloe swallowed. If she was- Whether or not she was really guilty of the murders Reese Getty laid at her door - and there was nothing but circumstantial evidence there, no matter how suggestive the weight of it might be - it was hard to imagine Sabrina being willing to destroy her whole world, even if Lucifer had planned it.

“No, of course not! Why would either of us _want-_ ”

“I don’t know! To stick it to your Dad, or...just because you can, how am I supposed to know?”

“ _Just because I can_?” Lucifer repeated, and his voice was bleak, his eyes wintry. “Nice to know what you think of me, Detective.”

All at once, the precariousness of her situation came back to her. Strange, but even after all he had done in their time together, she had never been scared of him before. “Lucifer, I-”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Detective,” Lucifer snapped, drawing away. “I’d ask what I’d done to suggest I would, but I suppose we both know the answer to that one, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Chloe forced herself to admit. “Yeah. I guess we do.”

Lucifer snorted. “So, tell me,” he said, venomously polite, “Which part is it that makes you think I’d destroy the only bloody bearable part of the cosmos for kicks? Heaven’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you realise. And Hell is...well, Hell. By definition, the worst possible place for a holiday…”

“Yeah, but…” Chloe swallowed. “It was your kingdom. That...that was where Matilda came from, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“She was-”

“A demon. Yes. So’s Maze, but by the sound of it you’d already worked that one out for yourself.” Lucifer was still watching her warily, as if she were the danger.

“And...in Hell...all those people you tortured.” Even now, she couldn’t quite picture it. Couldn’t reconcile Lucifer, standing there before her, sullen and sad and familiar, still, despite all she did not know about him, with the monster of Dante’s writings, frozen in a lake of ice and eternally devouring the souls of traitors. “Did you enjoy it?”

For a moment, Lucifer stared at her, speechless and- before, she would even have said hurt. Now, she could hardly imagine that she could hurt him. He was...everything he’d said he was, and she was just one mortal who’d be dead in what would feel to him like the blink of an eye.

“It was a _job_ , detective,” he said, low and pained. “Not even a job I wanted. Something I was _forced_ to do.” 

He stepped back suddenly, his face closing up, and somehow she always forgot just how expressive his face was until it closed off like this, like a set of shutters slamming shut behind his eyes.

“Very well, Detective,” he said, his voice very soft, and very distant, his eyes almost unseeing. “I’ll leave this in your capable hands. But if it’s preventing the apocalypse you’re interested in...you’ll keep that artefact as far away from my mother as it’s possible for it to get. The bottom of the Mariana Trench would probably count as hidden enough, but I suppose that isn’t feasible.”

It didn’t sound like a threat, even when everything Chloe had read and heard about the Devil said it should be. All the same, something in her gut twisted, and as Lucifer walked away she couldn’t help the sudden feeling that she had just made a terrible mistake.

The feeling only grew stronger as she re-entered the conference room, to find Ella, Dan and the Goddess gathered around the table.

“What happened to Lucifer?” Dan asked, craning his head to look past her, as if Lucifer might somehow be hiding behind a woman half a foot shorter than he was.

Chloe shrugged. “He...had to go. I think Sabrina should be coming out of her session with Linda about now.”

“Right.” Dan nodded. “How...how’s she coping with that, exactly? I know Trix has been worried.”

“I don’t know,” Chloe admitted. She’d hardly exchanged two words with Sabrina since the church.

Dan blinked. “You don’t? I thought-”

“Dan, the case?”

Chloe did her best to avoid the Goddess’s eyes. _She drowned the last batch_ , Lucifer’s voice whispered in the back of her mind. At a time when that story could not have been convenient for him, when it had gone against the image he was trying to convey, and had only made her dig into things he’d wanted left alone.

Suspects never told the truth in answer to a direct question. If you were going to get at the truth at all, it would be sideways, and some instinct told her that that had been one of those truths. Which meant that this woman, this entity standing in front of her had tried to drown the whole world, or at least most of the ancient Middle East, because she hadn’t wanted to be a grandmother.

And if Chloe wanted to bring Bianca Ruiz down, she was going to have to work with her. And if she didn’t want LA drowned beneath a second flood, she was going to have to betray her.

Even if Sabrina was going to bring about the end of the world - and that was a hard sell even if Chloe took the rest of it as read - the Goddess did not appear to be especially discriminating when it came to other casualties. Trixie would die beneath a flood just as surely as Sabrina - more so, maybe, with no terrifying magical powers to protect her. Even if Lucifer had been lying - and even now, she couldn’t think of a single time he’d directly lied to her - she couldn’t take that risk.

Dan coughed. “Yeah. It’s going to take a couple hours to scan the phone, and Bianca’s party isn’t until tonight, so...we’re sort of at loose ends until we’ve got one side or the other sorted.”

“Detective Espinoza and I can handle that side of things, I’m sure,” Goddess put in, with a thin smile.

Even before she’d known the truth, Chloe’s answer would have been the same. 

“No. Not happening. I’ll go.”

“But, Chlo-”

“No argument,” Chloe interrupted. “This is a case, not a date.”

The Goddess’s nostrils flared. “Very well,” she said, irritated. “But I suggest you go shopping. This isn’t the kind of place you can attend in pyjamas.”

Apparently satisfied to have gotten the last word, the Goddess stalked out. It was such a...such a catty, _high school_ sort of move that for a moment Chloe almost couldn’t believe it had just happened. Was an absolute lack of emotional maturity just a natural side-effect of phenomenal cosmic powers? It would explain a lot.

“...pyjamas?” she repeated, staring after Goddess.

Dan coughed, avoiding her eyes. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that.”

“I mean, I could always go?” Ella suggested. “Just a thought, but…”

Chloe shook her head. “We need you here. And _I_ apparently need to borrow a dress.” She wasn’t paying a fortune for something she’d only wear once to impress Bianca Ruiz and her crowd of scumbags and sycophants. Previously, Lucifer would’ve been her first port of call, but…

Well, she’d put paid to that idea pretty thoroughly as things stood.

Maze wasn’t an option either, for about the same reasons, which left only Ella and Linda, really, and of the two, Linda was the likeliest to have something that would actually fit in at this sort of event, or at least not stand out enough to jeopardise the investigation.

Chloe hadn’t spoken to Linda much since that day at the church either. They’d talked about Trixie’s therapy, and Linda had tried to offer her own support as well, but...but somehow, Chloe kept putting it off.

She’d promised Reese Getty she’d talk to Linda for him, even if she’d never countenance trying to give the man anything he truly wanted after everything he’d done. And every time she saw Linda, she couldn’t help but remember what she’d said. That she knew who Lucifer was, and what he was.

Was it- Was it right of her, to destroy that, and drag Linda into the danger and uncertainty of the world in which Chloe now found herself?

And if Lucifer’s intentions were as she feared...what did that mean for Linda? Did- Could the Devil even need therapy in the first place? Or had he just been toying with them, all along-

All the evidence pointed one way, and all her experience the other, and the last time Chloe had looked at a situation like that, it had been the evidence, and not her faith in Dan, that was proven right.

* * *

“Chloe!”

Linda looked paler than usual, slightly drawn, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. Chloe couldn’t blame her. She’d had a few sleepless nights too, after everything with Malcolm had gone down.

“Hey, Linda.”

“If you’re looking for Lucifer, he and Sabrina just left,” Linda said carefully, adjusting her glasses.

“I...I’m here for you, actually.”

Linda frowned at her. “You...you are?”

“Yeah.”

The furrow between Linda’s eyes deepened for a moment, and then smoothed out.

“...you know, don’t you,” she said, in such a _knowing_ tone of voice that Chloe was almost irritated, before the meaning of the words sank in.

“You...you know what he is?” she asked, her knees nearly buckling beneath her. “You’ve known this whole time, and you didn’t-?”  
Linda coughed. “Well. Not the _whole_ time. But...for the last few months or so...yes. I found out around last Halloween.”

 _I’ve broken my therapist_ , Lucifer had said on their next case after that, the one he’d spent impersonating Dan. 

“But...you’ve known all this time? And you’re still _treating_ him? And- And Sabrina, you know about-”

“Yes. And yes.” The look Linda fixed Chloe with then was very level, and very kind. “And it hasn’t changed my opinion of either one of them. I know it can be...overwhelming, at first. In fact, you’re taking this better than I did. I spent most of the immediate aftermath of the session where Lucifer...revealed the truth to me...locked in my office and hyperventilating.”

“I...I was going to run,” Chloe admitted. “I didn’t know where, I just- I had to get us away, but...Trixie needed therapy, and there was work, and I couldn’t disrupt her life again just after her second kidnapping in two years, and...God, I never thought I’d have to deal with that again.”

“Nobody ever expects something like that,” Linda said softly. “And that is a perfectly understandable reaction. None of this is easy. The _Devil_ ! _Demons_ ! _Hell_ ! _Witches_!” Her mouth quirked up. “Between you and me, by the time I got to that last bit I thought nothing could surprise me anymore.”

It had been the opposite, for Chloe. Witches, she could have dealt with. If Lucifer had turned out to be an incredibly powerful warlock or something...it wouldn’t have changed things for her. Or- Not much, anyway. Not the way the truth had.

“So how...how do you deal with that?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Do...how can you _trust_ him, knowing-”

Linda blinked, and frowned.

“I...I didn’t, for a long while. I mean...I got used to Maze first. And then...well. He hadn’t changed at all. He was the same patient I’d spent so many sessions getting to know. It wasn’t as if he’d ever lied to me, or done anything to suggest he might hurt me…”

“From what I’ve read, the Devil doesn’t need to do physical harm to hurt you,” Chloe said darkly, remembering all those texts, all those theories.

Linda shrugged. “I...I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that...and I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but...Hell was his prison too.”

That...made sense, actually. Once again, Chloe thought about Dante, and for all she was pretty sure she didn’t believe that an Italian poet had actually gone on a guided tour of Hell in the company of an ancient Roman poet...she thought of that poem’s Lucifer, trapped in ice, forever struggling to escape, even as the beating of his wings froze the ice that trapped him all the harder.

“As for the rest of it,” Linda went on. “You should talk to Lucifer.”

Something twisted in Chloe’s chest.

“Yeah. I...don’t think that’s an option right now.”

Not after the way she’d sent him packing at the precinct. She just- She wanted a way to trust him again. She wanted some proof that she _should_ trust him again, that she was doing the right thing by staying in LA and not running as far and fast as she could go. And there was no way to get that confirmation, because the one thing all the texts agreed on was that the Devil was deceptive. It didn’t matter if Lucifer, the Lucifer she knew, never lied. You looked at the previous criminal record first. It didn’t matter what your impression of the person was, you looked at the facts first.

She cleared her throat. “That...that’s not even why I’m here. I’m...supposed to be infiltrating a party. Thrown by Bianca Ruiz. And, apparently, I need a better dress than anything I own.”

“I’m...not sure anything of mine will fit properly, but I can try and find you something?” Linda offered, sounding dubious.

“Great, thanks.”

“And- Chloe,” Linda added. “My door is always open if you need it. It’s...overwhelming, knowing all of this when no-one else does.”

Overwhelming...well, that was one word for it. Terrifying, that was another. Because if there was a God, that meant...there was some _rightness_ in the universe, by which it might be judged. And it didn’t matter one bit to the universe if Chloe’s own morals lined up with that.

She didn’t know how anyone had ever found that a comforting thought, now.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, instead of trying to put any of that into words. “But first, I need to get this solved.”

* * *

Of course, it couldn’t be that simple.

Bianca Ruiz’s party was...much less overwhelming than Chloe had been picturing, and that was _definitely_ Lucifer’s influence. After the auction for the angel wings in the early days of their partnership, it was hard for anything to really overawe her. And, of course, the formerly-omnipotent Goddess with whom she was now working was acting like the catty mean girls in a high school movie - and Chloe had played enough of those in her teenage years to have _that_ role off by heart.

The dress Linda had lent her was longer and looser than anything Chloe would have chosen for herself, but it didn’t stand out as badly as her own clothes, or anything she might have borrowed from Maze. She could feel Goddess’s eyes lingering on it, and _refused_ to be ashamed.

“Let’s get this pyjama party started.”

The most irritating thing about said pyjama party, Chloe decided about halfway through, was _knowing_ just how many of the guests milling around the giant tequila bottles were up to their eyebrows in organised crime in one way or another, and not having a shred of evidence that would stand up in court. Oh, a lot of them were perfectly innocent - that was the point of events like this in the first place, to prop up Bianca’s ‘legitimate tequila magnate’ front, but others...the worst of the worst were here rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, and Chloe’s fingers itched for a set of handcuffs or a notepad - at this point, she’d take either.

She wanted to ask what it was that Zeke had been carrying, except-

Except that she couldn’t get it out of her mind, what Lucifer had said, all the little hints that had built up since Sabrina arrived in LA, how certain Lucifer had been that his mother had been behind the abductions…and the last thing Chloe wanted, if it was true, if Lucifer really could be trusted, or even if he couldn’t, was to let the Goddess know that Chloe knew what she was looking for...at least in the vaguest possible terms, and it didn’t mean she wanted to let the Goddess have it, either.

If she really wasn’t planning to drown all of LA...then Chloe could give her whatever it was later, if it really seemed like doing so wouldn’t cause any more problems.

She’d just resolved as much when she caught sight of the reason they were there at all. Chet Ruiz, over by the bar. Was it just Chloe’s imagination, or did he look squirrelly?

“There’s Chet,” she muttered, “I’ll go talk to him.”

The Goddess nodded. “You know, that’s wise. You seem more his type than me, and you’re not particularly intimidating, even if that dress doesn’t do you any favours.”

The dress was, so far as Chloe could tell, entirely inoffensive, a plain black sheath that would have been tight on Linda, but fit Chloe slightly more loosely, but at this point petty cattiness really ought to have been expected. Then the rest of that sentence sunk in.

“I’m sorry, his _type_?”

“Well, if you mean to seduce him-”

“I _don’t_!”

“Fine, I’ll do it-”

“No!” Chloe reached out to grab her elbow before she realised what she was doing. “No. There is going to be no seducing, honestly, you’re just like-” like Lucifer, she had been about to say, but the words caught in her throat.

Because Goddess _was_ like Lucifer, wasn’t she? _Did you think I took after my father,_ he’d asked her once. And now she knew that _this_ was his mother, it was hard not to concede the point. His mother...she honestly still couldn’t wrap her head around that. Maybe it was because she’d known this woman...this entity as Charlotte Richards for months now, a woman a bare handful of years older than Lucifer...or older than Lucifer looked, at any rate. The thought that he was older that the universe itself was almost harder to process than everything else this secret meant.

“I’m going to get Chet to talk,” she said, as briskly as she could manage. “That way I can have him incriminate himself, then we can arrest him and have him flip on Bianca.”

“Yes.” Goddess’s eyes were hard. “It’s terrible, isn’t it, how little loyalty can be relied upon? Even her own son, whom she has given everything he ever wanted…and only ever asked one little thing in return. And yet he’ll put his own selfish desires above that loyalty, the moment it starts to make things difficult for him.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds...personal.”

“Oh, it is. I am well-acquainted with how _ungrateful_ children can be.”

Chloe was just about to lean on that little hint, when she caught movement over by the bar. She glanced over, and winced.

“Oh. Bodyguard. Maybe he’s not as easy to get to as I thought.”

“Why would an overprotective mother bring her murderous son to a tequila-fuelled party?” Goddess asked, condescension dripping from every word.

“Well, if her son killed Zeke, she has no idea,” Chloe said, considering. Zeke Moore had been loyal, had been one of Bianca’s best, and she couldn’t imagine Bianca was any less interested in discovering his murderer than they were. And, if she knew the police were onto Chet and her own lawyer had apparently turned on her, she had the resources to put Chet well beyond their reach.

But until she knew that...Charlotte Richards had been the best of the best, and somehow despite lacking any apparent understanding of the way human beings worked, the Goddess had also turned out to be an absolute shark in the courtroom if necessary. She would be the natural choice to defend him, and in the meantime, driving a wedge into the organisation could only be to their advantage.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”

* * *

The plan played out almost as well as Chloe could have hoped. Better, in some respects, even if she did have to pretend to be Chet’s only actual fan to allay suspicion. In the end, they managed to get out of the party before half past ten, with the information that Chet Ruiz’s phone might be far more important to this whole case than any of them had guessed. It was past eleven by the time Chloe got home, and she knew Olga would tut disapprovingly at the hours Chloe was keeping.

Except- The lights were on in Olga’s apartment. Chloe could see the light shining from under her door. Olga was supposed to stay with Trix until Chloe got home, _why wasn’t she there?_

Heart in her throat, Chloe crept to her own front door, moving as softly and lightly as she could, every worst-case horror scenario imaginable already flooding through her mind. There was no sign of forced entry, the door was closed and locked. Heart hammering all the harder, hands shaking almost too hard to turn the key in the lock, Chloe opened the door-

The apartment looked...not pristine, as no home containing Trixie could stay that way for long, but there was no sign of a struggle, no blood. She could hear the sound of voices somewhere nearby, and as she watched, what she had taken for a black cushion left sitting on the back of the sofa uncoiled itself into the shape of a black cat. A very _familiar_ black cat.

Sabrina Spellman was sitting half-curled on Chloe’s sofa, with Trixie curled up against her side, Sabrina’s arm around Trix’s shoulders, talking to her in a low voice, too soft for Chloe to make out the words. There was a movie playing on the television, ignored - _Frozen_ again, Chloe thought, and did her best to suppress a groan - and Trixie’s face was tear-stained, but she was smiling. It had been days, now, since Chloe had last seen her smile.

The door clicked closed behind her, and Sabrina’s cat meowed, as if in warning.

Sabrina looked around, her eyes meeting Chloe’s.

For a moment, Chloe couldn’t move. She was back in the church, the smell of cooking meet and sulphur thick enough to choke her, those same eyes burning white from edge to edge-

And then Sabrina dropped her gaze, and Chloe could breathe again.

“What...what are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice still shaky.

Sabrina shrugged, a faint, sheepish smile on her face. “I told Olga you and Dad got caught up late at work and that I’d take over watching Trixie until my ride got here.”

It made sense. Sabrina had taken over for Olga before, although never this late, and it wasn’t as if Chloe had warned Olga not to let her do that anymore. She hadn’t known _how_.

“That’s not...why are you _here_?”

She’d murdered four people, might have killed more if they’d arrived any later, and even after all they’d done...they’d still been people. And, after all of that, Trixie had looked Chloe in the eye and said that it was _good_ , what Sabrina had done.

And maybe- Maybe Sabrina didn’t intend to be a corrupting influence. Maybe she really had just been defending herself. But at the same time...Tommy Kinkle. The mall Santa, Mr Bartel. If it was true that those missionaries hadn’t been Sabrina’s first kills...then Chloe didn’t want Trixie anywhere near her.

Sabrina’s eyes flicked down to the floor again. “I...wanted to check on Trix. And...and to apologise.”

“You shouldn’t be sorry,” Trixie said, in a thick, tearful voice. “If I hadn’t kept arguing with them-”

“Hey.” Sabrina brought up her other arm to wrap around Trixie. “I told you, they...they’d have hurt me whatever you said. If it wasn’t for me, you’d never have been involved at all. So, yeah, I do need to apologise.”

“They still shouldn’t’ve-”

“I know,” Sabrina cut in. “But they’re never going to do that to anyone else again. I promise.”

It would almost have been heartwarming, would have been, just weeks ago, but now...Chloe’s chest was tight, her heart hammering as she watched her daughter cuddle trustingly into the Antichrist’s shoulder.

“Monkey,” she said, through lips that felt stiff and heavy as lead. “Why- why don’t you get ready for bed? I need to talk to Sabrina.”

The girls exchanged a look, and then Sabrina pulled away, pausing the movie just as Prince Hans was about to reveal he’d never really cared about Anna in the first place.

“You heard her,” she said. “Go on.”

“But _‘Brina_ …”

“Go on. We can finish the movie tomorrow. Or...or you can, anyway.” Her eyes flicked to Chloe, wary and defiant and pleading all at once.

Trixie let out the most put-upon sigh Chloe had ever heard from her, and hopped up.

“ _Fine_ ,” she said, in tones of pure long-suffering exasperation. “But you are going to say goodbye, aren’t you?”

“If your mom lets me,” Sabrina promised. Chloe could feel Trixie’s eyes on her. Great. Now she was the bad guy, and it didn’t matter _why_ Chloe might not feel comfortable letting Sabrina in too close.

Trixie scowled, and buried her fingers in the cat’s soft fur. “If Salem comes with me you’ll have to come see me.”

Sabrina smiled, and it only looked a little strained. “I guess so. Or I could leave him with you for tonight, if you’re still having nightmares. Salem is good for those.”

The cat gave Sabrina a look that Chloe tried and failed not to think of as ‘disapproving’.

“But…” Trixie glanced at Salem, and then back at Sabrina. “But what’ll you do?”

“I’ll figure it out. Go on, go do your teeth. Salem…”

The cat actually huffed at that, deliberately turning around twice and coiling up to settle sullenly on the sofa like a furry black puddle.

“What- No, Salem. Salem, this is important-”

“You can work that out after,” Chloe cut in. “Monkey…”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “I’m going!” she said sulkily. “Bye, Sabrina.”

“Bye.”

Once Trixie had left the room, trailed by the cat, which appeared to be taking its duties as bodyguard seriously, some of the heaviness seemed to go out of the air, at least for Chloe. Sabrina, though, looked grim, shoulders slumped and her eyes fixed on her cat, avoiding Chloe’s gaze.

“You can’t just break in here,” Chloe said shortly. “You can’t- Do you know what I thought when I saw Olga wasn’t here?”

“...she wouldn’t be back in her apartment if Trixie had gotten kidnapped again,” Sabrina said defensively. “She’d have called you. Or...or whoever it was would’ve killed her, but-”

“That wasn’t-” Chloe drew in a breath. “You can’t break into _anyone’s_ home while they’re not there.”  
“I didn’t _break in_!” Sabrina snapped. “Trixie let me in, and Olga let me stay with her. I just…” she scuffed a socked foot along the floor. “I just wanted to see how she was doing. We haven’t seen each other since the church.”

Chloe sighed.

“Your dad know you’re here?”

A shrug. “...I didn’t tell him? I mean...he’s barely let me out of his sight since...everything, and I teleported over while he was still doing his set at Lux, so…”

“You can do that?” Chloe interrupted, a hundred new and horrifying possibilities springing to mind.

Very warily, Sabrina nodded.

Chloe let out a breath. “O- Okay. Let’s just assume, for the time being, that you’re not allowed to teleport around without someone knowing where you are either. That’s not-” She couldn’t imagine how worried she’d be, if Trixie was doing something like that. “It’s not safe, and Lucifer must be-”

“I’ll teleport straight back!” Sabrina protested. “And I just- I get that he’s worried, but there’s only so much overprotectiveness I can deal with. I mean, I actually _died_ one time back in Greendale, and my aunts didn’t overreact this much!”

And, all at once, the near-normalcy of fretting over Sabrina’s whereabouts was gone. She’d died before. And come back. Because she wasn’t...human, or at least not human in the same way as Chloe or Ella or Trixie or Dan. Because she had been born for one purpose and one purpose alone, or so Reese had said, and all Chloe’s research had reinforced, and since the world was still here, clearly that purpose wasn’t fulfilled yet.

Had that been why-? All those strange deaths, the murders...had she simply not understood, then, that other people dying was for good?

 _Was_ it, from her perspective? If the afterlife was real, was a concrete thing, and Sabrina knew about it…could she even be asked to take it as seriously as a human being for whom it might as well be the end?

Or was that just excuse-making, because she didn’t want to believe the worst of her best friend and his kid, even with all the evidence mounting up against them?

“...you died?” she asked, though, unable to restrain the morbid curiosity behind the question.

“Just the once,” Sabrina said quickly. “I...it was an arrow. Right here.” She tapped her chest, high on the left side, not quite over her heart. “More witch-hunters. I’m fine now.”

“So...you _can’t_ die? I mean...not permanently?”  
For a moment, Sabrina looked troubled.

“I...I don’t know. I thought it was a one-off, but then…” Her hand strayed involuntarily to her throat, and Chloe swallowed.

It had been one of the biggest mysteries of the case, that Sabrina’s shirt was soaked through with what tests confirmed to be her own blood, despite there not being a scratch on her. Trixie had said they’d cut her throat, still woke from nightmares of the church and crawled in beside Chloe, the way she hadn’t done in years, to bury her face in Chloe’s shoulder and mumble about all the blood, and the awful, choky sound of Sabrina’s breathing afterwards, before it had stopped, and Sabrina had saved them both.

She always put it that way. Sabrina saved them. Trix made it sound like something out of a superhero movie, Sabrina swooping in to rescue them, and also incidentally barbeque the guilty, which probably wasn’t going to be making any appearances in an action blockbuster anytime soon.

She shook herself. She wanted to go and find some way, any way, to keep witches out of a house, because if Sabrina could just teleport in any time she wanted then none of them were safe, but-

But that would mean turning her back.

She wanted to believe that that was just...rational caution, a wariness of everything she knew Sabrina was capable of, no matter how innocent she looked, but...but it wasn’t just that. Even now, even knowing...she’d nearly gotten herself killed trying to keep Trixie out of the worst of what the Order of the Innocents had been trying to do. More than that...Sabrina had been a part of their lives for a little over two months now. Chloe had got used to her, her eccentricities and her cat and her apparent unfamiliarity with anything made after the turn of the millennium, just like she’d got used to Lucifer.

It was- She’d learnt this with Dan, it was impossible to think of a person you knew when you heard a phrase like ‘dirty cop’ or ‘Antichrist’ or ‘Devil’.

It felt impossible, now, looking at Sabrina, standing there looking pale and anxious and quite unlike her usual confident self, to picture her as any sort of danger, except-

Except Chloe had seen it, and couldn’t unsee it. She could almost smell it, even now, that stench of sulphur and cooking meat, appetising and sickening all at once.

“Chloe?” Sabrina said, soft and slightly scared. “Are you-”

She took half a step forward, one hand outstretched, and Chloe found herself backing away without any conscious input from her brain. Sabrina froze, and the look that flashed across her face then was agonising to watch, betrayal and guilt and pain, as if Chloe had slapped her across the face, and even then Chloe wasn’t sure she’d have reacted this badly.

“Right,” she said hollowly. “Right. I guess...I guess that answers that question, then.” She hugged herself, looking suddenly every inch a vulnerable sixteen-year-old who’d been put through something nobody should ever have to endure, just a few weeks ago.

It was what she was, what every rational part of Chloe’s brain saw.

But...not all. Not anything like all. She’d never been in any real danger at all, had she, something whispered in the back of Chloe’s mind. She’d reduced her kidnappers to not much more than charred bones and burnt meat, and even if she’d been so exhausted afterwards that Lucifer had had to actually _carry_ her to the medics, neither of them had seemed...disturbed, afraid, concerned at all, even while Chloe had been nearly sick from anxiety and worry and horror at everything that had happened.

And if, beneath all of that, she had felt a certain vicious satisfaction that the people who had taken her baby were never going to wriggle out of justice the way her father’s killer had done...it wasn’t the same thing as doing the deed herself.

“You murdered four people.”

“They had already tried to murder me!” Sabrina snapped back. “What- What did you want me to do, just let them kill us?”

“No! I don’t-” Chloe broke off. “You’re a bright kid. You have _magical powers_. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have found some other way to deal with the situation.”

Sabrina’s jaw worked. “Maybe I could’ve,” she said stubbornly, “But I didn’t. _They deserved it._ ”

A chill went up Chloe’s spine.

“That isn’t your decision to make,” she said shortly. “If you’d done anything else, they’d have gone away for a good long time-”

“Would they?” Sabrina demanded. “How are mortal prisons supposed to hold nephilim? You haven’t- They’re more powerful than you know. They’d be out in days, hunting more witches-”

“And the witches? What will they be doing?” 

Even if Chloe only credited half of what she had seen...half was bad enough. Cannibalism, sacrifice, an entirely unnatural tornado tearing through Massachusetts out of season and causing devastation to both people and property. Reese might have been reaching somewhat on the murders - Tommy Kinkle had been caught in a mine collapse and committed suicide, and Mr Bartel...well, he had been an old man, and nobody in Greendale seemed to suspect foul play - but even Chloe could not come up with another explanation for the tornado.

Sabrina stared at her, agog. “What- This isn’t- Weren’t you and Dad tag-teaming me with the ‘victim-blaming is irresponsible even when the victim is yourself’ line after that thing with Montgomery-”

“This isn’t the same as getting slipped a spiked drink at a party! It’s-” Chloe stopped. Drew in a breath. “They shouldn’t have taken Trixie. That’s on them. Just...tell me one thing. Is it true?”

Sabrina blinked. “Is what true?”

“All of it- The blood sacrifices, the rituals, the cannibalism...is it true?”

Sabrina went still and tense, ready to run, and Chloe knew she had her answer.

“It’s not-” Sabrina started weakly. “I mean, _I_ don’t-”

“But others?” Chloe probed. “This...there are witches that do these things?”  
Slowly, reluctantly, Sabrina nodded.

“Mortals too,” she said quickly. “We’re not...it’s not as though witches have a monopoly on-” her face twisted. “But it’s not...it’s over. My coven doesn’t-”

“But if you did…” there was a burning sour taste in the back of Chloe’s throat. “If you did...would any mortal authorities be able to stop you?”

Sabrina’s eyes flicked back down to the floor.

Chloe nodded, slow and slightly shaky. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t have guessed at, but confirmation made her throat go dry and her fingers twitch with the urge to ball into fists at her sides.

“Then what’s the difference between what they’re doing, and what you did at that church?” she asked, her voice hard.

“What’s the- _They were going to kill us!_ ” Sabrina spat. “I- Maybe I could’ve done something different, but if I hadn’t done anything, Trixie and I would both be dead! You can’t honestly think that would be better-”

“No,” Chloe admitted. “But that doesn’t mean...your first thought was murder, Sabrina. Your first instinct. That...that isn’t something that comes naturally. So I did a bit of digging.”  
Sabrina’s face, already pale, grew paler. “...digging?”

“Yeah.” Chloe swallowed. “This...this wasn’t the first time, was it?”

Sabrina’s eyes flicked to Chloe’s face, clicked away again.

“...no,” she admitted, her voice so soft it was barely audible. “It wasn’t.”

All the breath seemed to go out of Chloe at once.

She’d suspected, before, but...she’d hoped she was being paranoid. She hadn’t wanted to believe-

But here it was. Sabrina could have denied it, easily, and Chloe would probably have listened. But she hadn’t. She’d killed before.

“Tommy Kinkle?” Chloe asked, her voice hard.

Sabrina seemed, all at once, to shrink, her shoulders slumping, drawing in on herself like a fan folding up.

“Yeah,” she said, and her voice was a thin shadow of itself. “But how- How do you know about that? I- everyone thought it was suicide.”

That was the most worrying thing of all, now Chloe had her answer.

The deaths of the Order of the Innocents had been pure self-defence, the tornado...might well have been an accident, if Sabrina had that much power to throw around, but faking a suicide?

 _That_ looked premeditated. It was only in eighties teen movies that it was possible to do that by accident.

“Reese Getty told me.”

“And you believe him? After everything he did-?”

“I didn’t, before.” It had been the most tenuous of his theories, and those had been wild to begin with. “But you just confirmed it.”

“Oh.” It came out as a low pained rush of breath, barely audible at all even in the shocked silence that followed Chloe’s last words.

All of Sabrina’s usual confidence seemed gone, her eyes huge and dark and wet in her pale face. She was still, the stillness of a deer caught in headlights, or a wild animal caught in a trap, and she was, by her own admission, a murderer.

“I can’t-” Chloe’s voice caught. “I can’t prove anything. And I know Lucifer could and probably would buy as many judges and juries as it took to keep you free anyway.” For all his peculiar sense of justice, the law had never been important to Lucifer in the same way as _punishment_ was. “I suppose he’s known this whole time?”

Sabrina nodded, quick and almost skittish.

All this time, all this time, Sabrina had been...not just a witch, not just the Antichrist, but a killer like any other, and Lucifer had known. Maybe it was something about Chloe, because the person she trusted most in the world concealing a crime from her and her letting him once might have been bad luck, but twice was the start of a pattern.

“And I suppose,” she went on, her voice now just barely starting to shake. “That if I tried to expose any of this, Lucifer would deal with that problem too?”

“No!” Sabrina was already shaking her head. “He wouldn’t...it’s not _like_ that!”  
“Then explain what it _is_ like, because currently all I know is that he helped conceal five murders because you were involved!”

Sabrina didn’t flinch.

“ _He_ isn’t doing any such thing,” she said, low and fierce. “Nobody is trying to conceal what happened in that church. And we both know what will happen if you try to prove I was guilty. I wouldn’t _need_ to buy a jury.”

It was true, every word of it. One death already down as a suicide, and it might even have been one, technically, with Sabrina’s powers. The other four...had been Sabrina’s kidnappers, and their deaths so inexplicable that Chloe herself wouldn’t have believed it, if she hadn’t seen with her own eyes what Sabrina was capable of. And Chloe had seen enough juries swayed by a charming defendant with a good lawyer to know how thoroughly Sabrina could twist a courtroom around her little finger if she wanted to, with or without any supernatural persuasion on her part or her father’s.

“One murder or five,” she said evenly. “I don’t want a killer anywhere _near_ Trixie.”

Except Dan, because he was her father. Except Chloe herself, because she’d killed too, hadn’t she? Except Sabrina, who had killed to defend her...and had already had a hand in a man’s suicide, back in Massachusetts, without even the dubious defence Dan had had for shooting Malcolm that first time.

Sabrina’s face crumpled. “What- But- Chloe, come on, you _know_ me-”

“I thought I did.”

But she’d thought she’d known other people too. Dan. Half the precinct, who’d turned their backs on her the moment she’d started talking about corruption even if they weren’t dirty themselves. Maze. Lucifer. 

God, she couldn’t believe how near she’d been to deciding that all the evidence she’d collected, dating back centuries, and all Reese Getty’s observations - twisted as his eventual goals had been, his research was solid - were just hearsay, never more than circumstantial evidence, before this confirmation.

She’d thought Tommy Kinkle’s death the weakest link in all his accusations, and if that was true...then how much else was? Maybe not all, but enough to be worrying. And there was nothing, within the law, that Chloe could do about it.

“...yeah,” Sabrina said, and now her voice was steady. “I thought the same.”

She brushed past Chloe without even stopping to call for her cat, turned at the door and disappeared into the air with a soft _pop_ of displaced air, leaving no sign that she had ever been there at all except the creeping feeling that Chloe had said something that she could never take back.

She had never even asked, she realised, sitting down heavily on the sofa, what it was that Tommy Kinkle had done that had made Sabrina want to kill him in the first place.

Which was- There was no reason there should _be_ a reason, if she only looked at Reese Getty’s research, but...she had no choice but to believe Sabrina capable of cold-blooded murder. She’d seen _that_ with her own eyes. But even with that evidence, Chloe could not believe her capable of doing so _purposelessly_. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.

“Mom? Sabrina, can you-” Trixie’s voice petered out, and Chloe looked around to see her standing in the bathroom door, with Sabrina’s black cat in her arms and looking long-suffering, looking around as if to see where Sabrina had gone.

“Sabrina...had to go,” Chloe said, a little awkwardly.

“You didn’t let her say goodbye.” Trixie’s voice was small, and hurt, and- betrayed. Of course it was. It wasn’t as though Chloe had missed how attached she had already been to Sabrina, and that was before the abduction. Trauma bonding was a known phenomenon, after all.

“She...didn’t really give me the chance,” she edged, though she didn’t know what she’d have said if Sabrina had asked to be allowed to. “I- Trixie. You know that Sabrina will be going home at the end of the summer?”

“Yeah?” Trixie frowned at her. “But...it’s only June. And she said she’d give me a spelled mirror so we can still talk.”

Well, _that_ wasn’t a terrifying thought at all. Chloe tried not to imagine the possibility of being watched through every mirror, every reflection in the metal of a coffee-maker, every pane of glass, and couldn’t suppress a shudder.

“...did she.”

“Yeah?” Trixie squinted at her. “You’re still freaking out.”

She couldn’t deny that.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Chloe swallowed. “I just...Trix. You know...you know she killed those people at the church.”

Trixie nodded, looking mulish. “So?”  
“So...so they’re _dead_ , Trix! And I know- I know they deserved to be punished for what they did to you both, but killing them…”

“They were going to kill us!”

“I know.” Chloe drew Trixie over to sit on the sofa beside her, as Salem made a hasty escape. “And for that, they should’ve been locked away for the rest of their lives. They don’t treat people like that kindly in prison, you know. Even other murderers don’t like them. That would’ve been...fair. Killing them-”

“What else was Sabrina supposed to do?” Trixie demanded, bouncing up. “They’d already hurt her! I thought she was going to _die_! If you’d got there sooner, maybe-” she broke off.

If she’d got there sooner...Chloe didn’t know whether to wish for that or not. She wished, more than anything, that she could still believe Lucifer and Sabrina were just...quirky, mostly harmless, people she could live with. But with what she knew now, what she increasingly suspected...no. Better to know the worst of it. She’d learnt that lesson with Dan too.

“I know,” she said, “But...she has magic, remember? She could easily have just...turned them all into frogs, or frozen them in ice, or done any number of other things to stop them. But she didn’t.”

Trixie still looked sulky. “ _You’ve_ killed people,” she muttered.

Chloe’s heart twisted. “Only when I didn’t have another choice.”

“I guess.” Trixie kicked her feet. “She _will_ come and get Salem, though, won’t she?” she asked, not quite pleading.

“I...yeah, of course she will. You know how much she loves that cat.”

Trixie looked relieved, and looked around for Salem, who had taken up a post in front of the television and seemed to be pointedly ignoring them. There had always been something about that cat that struck Chloe as slightly too intelligent. She supposed she could guess at why, now.

“...okay.” Trixie’s eyes were fixed on the frozen screen, and for once, Chloe couldn’t read her expression.

* * *

The next morning did not hold any improvements on the situation either.

Trixie had been enrolled in a summer programme for the day, since Olga couldn’t be expected to watch her all day while Chloe was working, and Chloe had had to dig out a cereal bowl and some of the previous night’s dinner to feed Salem before dropping her off.

Things at the precinct were almost as grim. Cyber couldn’t crack Chet Ruiz’s phone, despite his having been fool enough not to install any sort of remote-wiping software in the event of his having anything actually incriminating in his phone. Well, more incriminating than where it had been found, anyway. They could do it the old-fashioned way, but that would take most of a month.

And Chloe was still no closer to figuring out what this artefact that Lucifer and his mother both wanted so badly was. And, more pressingly, what she’d do with it if she found it. Hand it over to the Vatican for safekeeping? Would they even believe her if she tried it?

Zeke Moore’s last known import on the books was a shipment of fancy artisan coffee. Off the books...they didn’t know, though he had a history of dealing in illegal antiquities that might provide some clues. Ancient Sumerian, Lucifer had said. Not that that was much help. She didn’t know much about Ancient Sumeria, and in the middle of a case wasn’t the best time to go haring off after an unrelated research topic, but she’d googled a little. The first people to develop writing, mass-produced pottery, hydraulic engineering, metallurgy and the plough, among other things, and she couldn’t see what there was in any of those that might be relevant to the task of storming the gates of Heaven. Again.

But the what was almost less important than the _where_. Where, if she were Chet Ruiz, and had murdered and robbed one of his mother’s soldiers who had dealt in antiquities on the side, would she stash something like that?

She wouldn’t put it past Chet to have thrown it away entirely, whatever it was, if it didn’t look especially valuable. Or if it did, he might keep it...in his apartment? Surely even Chet Ruiz couldn’t be that much of an idiot.

Even if he was, Bianca wasn’t, and now she knew what her son had done she’d have to act. In which case her first move would be getting rid of anything that could tie Chet to the murder. Bianca had any number of ways of getting cocaine and guns and money out of the country, but antiquities weren’t her usual line. The same rough principles applied, of course, but you did need to have somewhere to hide whatever it was. And, what was worse, both Lucifer and his mother had ways around Bianca Ruiz.

If Lucifer let it be known how much he was willing to pay for this thing...or if the Goddess used Charlotte Richards’ connections to lay hands on it....there wasn’t much Chloe could do about it. Not until Bianca had been taken down.

Of course, that plan collapsed as soon as Chloe came into the labs looking for Ella, to find the Goddess holding Chet Ruiz’s phone, positively radiating the intention to steal it for Charlotte Richards’ scumbag client. Well, that made a lot of things simpler.

“Start talking.”

The Goddess put a hand to her chest, looking almost comically wounded. “About what? I thought I’d kept my end of the bargain-”

“Nice try. Put. The phone. Down. Now. And tell me why you were taking it.”

If this had been Charlotte Richards, Chloe would’ve said she got a better offer, that maybe Bianca had decided to give her some incentive not to betray her, or used some other means to secure her cooperation. As it wasn’t...she might have to change her definition of ‘a better offer’.

“Bianca asked me to take the phone,” the Goddess said, guileless.

“And you agreed to it?” Chloe shook her head. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You were only going to do what suited you all along.”

“It wasn’t quite that simple! I wouldn’t have done it at all, if-”

She actually managed to sound affronted.

“If there wasn’t something in it for you?” Chloe suggested, bone dry.

“If she hadn’t threatened to kill my family if I didn’t.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “You never struck me as the family-oriented type.”

If she really had drowned her grandchildren, if Lucifer’s suspicions of what she’d meant to do to Sabrina had been accurate - and Chloe thought they were - then the greatest threat to the Goddess’s family was the Goddess herself. As for Charlotte Richards...well, Chloe had heard enough rumours about the state of her divorce case to make a few guesses about how well the Goddess had adjusted to parenting human children.

“You don’t know everything about me.”

“You’d be surprised.” Chloe sighed. “I know Zeke acquired something for you,” she said bluntly. “I figured that out early on.”

The Goddess blinked at her. “Why- How did you do that?”

“I’m a detective, remember?” Chloe lied, though she didn’t feel like much of one now, with how thoroughly she’d been deceived. “Why else would you care? You’re only Zeke’s attorney because of Bianca, and Charlotte Richards was never known for loyalty to her clients beyond what it could do for her own bank account.”

Goddess shifted. “Well...I’m not the same person I was then.”

It was the exact sort of not-quite-lie that Chloe kept catching Lucifer in, now that she knew to look, and it was infuriating.

Chloe gritted her teeth. She hadn’t wanted to do this, but…

On one side, she could bring down the Ruiz empire, quicker and more easily than any of them had ever suspected. On the other, she could save...maybe the world, maybe just LA, because floods weren’t known for discriminating between innocent and guilty and Chloe’s research had included enough Bible study to know how badly that was going to end.

Or she could lie, and do both at once.

It was such a simple decision, when she looked at it that way.

“I don’t...Charlotte. I don’t know what you’re after. Drugs, weapons…”

“Nothing like that,” the Goddess said quickly. “It’s nothing illegal. And I had already paid for it, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have it.”

If Lucifer was telling the truth, there were a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t. Chloe didn’t know if she could trust that...but she couldn’t take the risk, either. Err on the side of caution.

“Bianca offered to give you whatever you wanted in exchange for your giving her the phone,” she said, as levelly as she could. “Is that right?”

The Goddess was still, but she didn’t deny it.

Chloe nodded. “But...well...you of all people have to know how little your clients can be trusted. You’ve already proven that your loyalty can’t be entirely relied upon. Don’t you think it’s more likely that a woman like that, who has _no_ issue with murdering people by the hundreds to make a few extra dollars on the side, would want to clean up any loose ends? Such as, say, a lawyer who can no longer be trusted to represent her family’s interests?”

It would never have worked on the real Charlotte Richards, because that woman knew her clients, knew how much of Bianca’s reputation and power in the underworld relied on a reputation for keeping her word, and that her own abilities were too valuable to be thrown away so easily.

The Goddess...she’d been on Earth less than a year, and she was...she was like Lucifer. And, for all his cunning, Lucifer still had these moments of perverse innocence where human nature was concerned.

The Goddess scoffed. “I’m hardly that easy to dispose of…”

“For a woman like Bianca Ruiz?” Chloe pressed. “You’re far from the only lawyer on her payroll.” She - or Charlotte Richards, rather, the _real_ Charlotte Richards - might be the most skilled, but nobody in Bianca’s position only kept the one attorney. “And you’re not the only one she could go after. You have family. And- and friends. I know you spend a lot of time with Lucifer’s brother.”

Something flickered across the Goddess’s face, and Chloe knew she had her.

“But what would Bianca gain from killing me that she couldn’t by giving me what I wanted?”

“It would make her seem weak,” Chloe said quickly. “If she can be menaced into paying you off rather than making an example for disloyalty. You have to know she’s done it before. You defended the hatchet-man in most of those cases.”

It was even mostly true, though Bianca had never been tied to any of those murders. Chloe just hoped it would be enough.

“I-”

“Just think about it,” Chloe said, catching her arm. “I know how badly you must want whatever this thing is, if you had to resort to using Zeke just to get it into the country. Bianca knows that too. She’s using it to trap you.”

The Goddess’s eyes narrowed. “...you’re asking me to help you bring her down,” she said. “But if I were to believe you...wouldn’t that merit...some kind of reward?”

“Probably,” Chloe said neutrally. The trick, she thought, was not to promise anything outright. It was still a deception, and it rankled to have to resort to it. Lies never led to justice, her father used to say. But if the only way she could see involved lying, then….then what choice did she have?

“And if, say, certain items happened to...to disappear from evidence…”

“I can’t give you anything imported into this country illegally,” Chloe said shortly. “But if there’s no record of something, it might be overlooked in the evidence.”

Which was perfectly true. There was no need to tell the Goddess that Chloe had no intention of letting her have what Zeke Moore had been smuggling for her. People were very good at filling in the gaps in what was said, and what wasn’t. Look at Chloe. She’d been doing it practically since the day she and Lucifer met.

The thought of what she was going to have to do sat in the pit of her stomach like a stone. The Goddess would never have the chance to steal from evidence, because the evidence wouldn’t be there. It felt like a betrayal of herself, of everything she’d joined the force to do and everything she’d condemned Dan for, when he was the guilty one. But what other choice did she have?

* * *

Of course, it couldn’t be as simple as that.

The plan was simple, which should’ve been the first sign that something was going to go wrong. The Goddess would go in, with the phone, wearing a wire, and try to convince Bianca to incriminate herself while she thought herself unobserved.

The phone, so far as everyone else was concerned, was the greatest risk. Greater still, to Chloe, was the chance that Bianca would keep her word upfront, would hand over whatever artefact the Goddess needed straight away. She’d argued for a cloned phone for that very reason, even knowing the risk, and been overruled in the end by the lieutenant, who had seen far too much promise in this case to risk it all like that.

Chloe was in the surveillance van. She didn’t realise until he got there that somebody had called Lucifer in too.

“Detective.”

His voice was clipped, colder than usual, but he didn’t say anything else as he settled in the other seat of the surveillance van, as far from Chloe as he could go. Chloe felt an odd thrum of...not quite guilt. She’d been the one deceived here, not him. She hadn’t changed at all. Though she supposed nor had he, fundamentally, except that she knew all of him now, and not just the things he’d thought it advantageous to show her.

Except-

Except, she couldn’t quite square that, either.

His childishness, his self-centredness, his inability to understand human emotions...they’d all driven her up the wall. She’d detested him when they first met, far from being lured in by surface charm. But- But that had surprised him. She’d seen the supernatural influence he could wield over human minds, and did as often as not. In the beginning, he’d been surprised when that hadn’t worked with her, and so he’d changed his tactics. That was all it had ever been, she reminded herself sharply. It was just giving him what he wanted to feel guilty, now she’d seen through it at last.

He didn’t speak again until the van shuddered into motion, and at the time, Chloe was almost grateful for it. She didn’t need more questions now, and she’d been doing this too long to expect direct answers out of Lucifer. All the same, it was a shock when he spoke again, and his voice was rough and harsh.

“I don’t care what you say to me, Detective.”

Chloe blinked. “...I never thought you did.” Even before she’d known the truth, insults just seemed to slide off Lucifer like whatever it was water slid off. Some kind of waterfowl, she thought. Possibly geese.

“What I care about,” Lucifer went on, and there was fury in his voice now, banked and smouldering. “Is that you chose to let my history affect your treatment of Sabrina.”

Chloe’s stomach twisted.

She hadn’t-

She ought to have expected this. But she hadn’t. Because somewhere along the line, she’d found herself picking up on the idea that all the Antichrist was, really, was...a tool. Something Lucifer could use to his own advantage, ending the world or whatever that was. Somewhere along the line, she’d half-forgotten what she’d _seen_ , and thought she’d known, which was that Lucifer had, in the space of less than two months, gotten himself wrapped so tightly around his daughter’s little finger that he’d be lucky to ever disentangle himself again.

“It wasn’t just _your_ history,” she said, because it was true, and because she couldn’t say any of the rest of it.

“Yes. I heard.” Lucifer snorted. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve apparently decided that rumours and superstition were enough evidence to condemn me on. Why not do the same for her?”

“It was a bit more than hearsay,” Chloe retorted, stung. “She admitted it herself when I asked her.”  
“Admitted what, exactly? That the Kinkle boy’s death wasn’t a suicide? It wasn’t,” Lucifer added, “But he was already dead by the time his brother pulled the trigger. Where it mattered, anyway.”

Chloe froze.

She’d known he knew. Sabrina had admitted that much too. She hadn’t expected him to admit it.

“How can I trust you when you say that?” she demanded. “You’re-”

“Still the same person I was before you found out the truth,” Lucifer interrupted. “My rules still stand even if you don’t believe in them. I never lie to _anyone_. Though some of my former subjects are so deceitful they can’t ask for blood when they’re thirsty, which is probably where that idea came from. I swear, if I could kill Baphomet again, I’d do it slower this time.”

“Baphomet,” Chloe repeated. “Is that a….a demon? Like Maze?”

“Not...quite...like Maze. But close enough. He’s where the goat thing comes from, by the way, though it took me centuries to figure that one out. Runty little thing who first came up here around the Crusades, and borrowed the name from Templar gibberish. He had a taste for worship, apparently, which was what got us all into trouble back in April.”  
Chloe had understood every word he was saying, but somehow he still managed to make no sense when she put it all together.

“When you found Sabrina,” she said, grasping at the one part of that little speech that seemed relevant.

“Yes.” Lucifer wasn’t looking at her. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw as tight as iron, his eyes pitch black and fathomless.

He’d said something about that, the day he brought her back to LA, Chloe remembered suddenly. Forced into far too many things by far too many people, he’d said. The memory made something twist painfully in her chest at the thought. Had that been true, then? She couldn’t see what he’d gained from the lie, if it was a lie, except to make her sympathetic to Sabrina, whom she’d barely known then, and hadn’t started to get to know properly until Lucifer brought her over to stay during the case at the mental hospital.

“You said,” Chloe said slowly. “The day you got back to LA, you said that something had been influencing her. Something claiming to be you. Was that-”

“That was Baphomet. He took advantage of my absence from Hell to launch an attempt at a coup. As my heir, if he could force Sabrina into a marriage with him, his claim would be entirely legitimate, and if he was able to get enough of the infernal aristocracy on his side, he might be able to overthrow me even if I did return to Hell.”

It felt...surreal.

Something in Lucifer’s voice had shifted - he didn’t sound quite like the man she’d thought she knew. Or maybe that was just the words, something out of _Game of Thrones_ or medieval history, not the real life a person Chloe knew. Two people.

“Was that…” a terrible certainty was growing in Chloe now. “Was that what happened to Tommy Kinkle?”

If it was...then Sabrina was as much victim as perpetrator, possibly more. And it would make sense- She’d seemed close to tears, last night, when Chloe had mentioned it. And Chloe called herself a detective, a friend, a sympathetic person.

“It is...related.” Lucifer’s mouth twisted. “But you don’t have any reason to believe me, do you?”

“Lucifer, I-”

“No, I _completely_ understand. I _am_ the Prince of Lies, after all.” Lucifer laughed, low and bitter. “I don’t imagine you ever stopped to consider how I might’ve acquired that title. No faster way to discredit someone than to name them a liar. You don’t even need to prove it.” There was bitterness in every syllable, and for a moment, just a moment, Chloe was half-seduced by it.

It would be- It would be so _good_ to be able to believe it. To believe the evidence of her own eyes and ears and their year and a half of friendship. To trust that the Lucifer she knew - stubborn, childish, self-centred, absolutely inept at anything involving emotions, his own or anyone else’s, loyal and reckless and so much more caring than he would ever admit - was real, and the rest of it all stories, propaganda, history written by the winners of the greatest war in the history of the universe and beyond. It had been easy to believe that Dan was trustworthy too. She’d wanted to believe that too. And Dan had explained things too, made her feel like she couldn’t trust her own perceptions, had her apologising for investigating Malcolm’s crimes even when he’d known better than anyone that the man was guilty as sin.

But-

The memory came like lightning. _I will not have you think more highly of me than I deserve._ He’d said that too. At the time, she’d been...confused, annoyed, not sure what to think. She still was. It hadn’t done anything to draw her in closer, had only frustrated her more. That probably meant he’d been telling the truth.

It would be easier if she could reject the stories wholeheartedly. But Lucifer _was_ proud, he _was_ dangerous, she could easily see him tempting someone into doing what his father had forbidden just because his father had forbidden it, without a thought as to the consequences. He was capable of terrible fury and cruelty she couldn’t begin to guess at the true depths of, though she had only seen the surface, and if Sabrina hadn’t killed her abductors herself, Lucifer would probably have inflicted a fate on them that would make them wish for death. She’d already known all of that before she’d known what he was.

It was just that that knowledge magnified everything she had known about him before, put it into a context as vast as the universe, and maybe Lucifer was everything she’d thought he was, but qualities that were harmless, even endearing, in a human being, even one with as much influence as Lucifer could bring to bear, became vast and terrifying in the context of a being that would outlive this whole planet and everything on it, and for whom the life of any given human being could hardly mean more than the life of an ant-

Except- Except that here he was, angry at her for upsetting Sabrina, angry at her for rejecting him too, when the opinion of an ant would hardly affect Chloe at all, even if she had the means to understand one. She couldn’t make sense of that, either.

“Well,” Lucifer said, still not looking at her. “No need to worry about that, Detective. This’ll be our last case together.”

“What?”

“Well, since I don’t imagine you’ll be that long in informing the lieutenant of the dissolution of our partnership, and even Dan is less willing to work with me now, there’s really no point in me sticking around, is there?”

“...but…” Chloe groped for an answer. “What about Lux? Didn’t you go...completely overboard..trying to save the club? And Maze? And Linda? I’m not your whole life here-”

“Maze...will do as she chooses.” Lucifer’s mouth twitched. “As she will no doubt remind me. I’ll be leaving Lux to her anyway if she wants it. Or there’s Patrick, if she doesn’t. He knows enough of how the place runs to do a good job of it.”

“And you?” Chloe’s tongue felt heavy, thick. She swallowed. “You’re going back? Back to-”

“Massachusetts.” Lucifer grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong, you wouldn’t catch me living in Sabrina’s postage-stamp if it were the last place on Earth, but Boston shouldn’t be _too_ bad, and it’s close enough for weekend visits.”

Chloe had never been to New England, but in her head the place was associated with Puritans, bad drivers, cold winters, general unfriendliness. She couldn’t picture Lucifer there. New York, maybe, at a stretch, but even that felt faintly wrong. Imagining Lux without Lucifer at his piano, holding court, so that the whole club seemed to orbit around him...it was even more impossible. And even thinking of going back to solving cases without him...it wouldn’t be the same as it was before. She wasn’t the despised precinct pariah anymore, lower than a dog to most of her colleagues. But- She’d worked without him a few times since this had begun, and every time...she didn’t need him, she’d gotten to the bottom of things without him perfectly well...but the work felt lighter with him there.

And maybe that had been the trap, all along. That she couldn’t stop comparing life without Lucifer to life _with_ Lucifer, and that, no matter what he did, they always ended up coming back together, no matter how furious with him she might be at the time. Until it felt inevitable.

Well, she wasn’t going to beg him to stay, if that was what he wanted from her. If he wanted that sop to his ego or that proof of his victory, he was going to have to go without.

“Yeah,” she said, keeping her voice ruthlessly steady. “That’s probably a good plan.”

“I wasn’t aware I needed your approval on it.”

“You’re right, you don’t.” Chloe didn’t look around. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Did he look disappointed? She couldn’t see, and she didn’t care. All it would prove was that this had been a ruse from the start. And if he did leave...then she would cope. She’d said it herself, she didn’t need him. She just...wanted him. Even knowing how bad for her he’d be in the long term.

They rode the rest of the way in silence, staying carefully just far enough behind Charlotte Richards’ car to allay suspicion, and though quarters were close and cramped, Chloe had never felt further from him.

There wasn’t even any sarcastic commentary on the exchange itself, when usually Lucifer couldn’t resist chiming in at any use of the word ‘Hell’. Maybe the joke had worn thin now somebody else was in on it. He was listening now with quiet, deadly seriousness, the stillness that belonged to the King of Hell, and not the Lucifer she’d thought she knew. Right up until the line crackled with static, and then went dead.

“We’ve lost the feed,” Chloe said brusquely, checking the monitors.  
Lucifer scowled. “It appears my mother has finally got around to her sudden but inevitable betrayal.”

Chloe nodded, and reached for the radio, ready to call for backup. Apparently the Goddess had discovered the lie.

Things moved very quickly, after that.

It was easy, in the chaos of the arrests, to palm the key off Bianca Ruiz’s desk, and slip it into a pocket. Chloe would go looking for whatever it was the Goddess wanted after she’d finished here, or at least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, she had underestimated the Goddess’s powers of observation.

“Detective,” she hissed, hurrying to draw level with Chloe as she reached the doorway, low enough that the other officers could not hear from where they had already left, or were still lingering around Bianca Ruiz’s desk. “You have something of mine.”

“I can’t let you take this from an active crime scene,” Chloe said back, low but not a whisper - whispers always drew more attention, especially around cops, who were suspicious by nature. “I’ll volunteer to go check it out, and tell them it was empty, and Bianca double-crossed you.”

“How can I trust you to hold up your end of the bargain?” the Goddess’s eyes narrowed, and Chloe fought to keep her expression open, irritated, innocent.

“Because between you or your son, I’ll trust a Goddess before the Devil,” she lied, and only realised once the words were out that it _was_ a lie. She didn’t trust Lucifer. Didn’t want to. But between him and his mother, he was the more known quantity. Better the Devil you know, Chloe thought, and only barely suppressed a hysteric fit of the giggles.

The Goddess’s expression didn’t change, except...there was something satisfied, now, in the gleam of her eyes, the curve of her smile. As if she’d won a victory. Of course, she’d come after Chloe once she knew the truth, that Chloe had never meant to give her this artefact at all, but by the time she did, Chloe...Chloe would have to be gone too.

The Vatican, she thought. She couldn’t think of a Protestant church centralised enough to have the same resources, and she couldn’t protect this, whatever it was, for herself. She could take some leave - she had a fair bit of it built up - and go to Rome, take Trixie, maybe plead the trauma of the kidnapping if anyone asked too many questions.

“Detective,” Lucifer called from somewhere behind her, only to brush past Chloe as she turned with an arch. “You’re blocking the door.”

Chloe glared at his retreating back - it wasn’t as if he had anywhere more pressing to go than any of the rest of them, even if he never did his paperwork.

“I want to go with you,” the Goddess said.

Chloe froze. “...I can’t allow that, either. You’re too close to this case, and if anyone finds out about this, it’s my job on the line. There’s your security. If you tell anyone, that’s the end of my career and probably my life anywhere outside a prison.”

That much, at least, was true. It still felt terrible to say it, to know that she’d joined the ranks of the dirty cops she’d despised from the beginning, even for the best cause in the world. The moment she logged that safe-deposit box as empty, the moment she lied on the record, it would be irrevocable. And the moment the Goddess realised she’d been tricked, she would make sure everyone knew it. Chloe wasn’t Dan, she couldn’t weather a fall the way he could. She’d be out on her ear, and she didn’t know what would happen to her then. But if it meant the world, she would do it.

“You can destroy me,” she said, very quietly. “I’m trusting you not to. Can you trust me in return?”

Slowly, grudgingly, the Goddess nodded.

“So,” Chloe said, “I am going to check out this safe-deposit box-”

She fumbled for the key in her pocket. And found nothing.

All the blood drained from her face as she looked back at the Goddess. Lucifer, she thought numbly. Lucifer, who had brushed past her - an old pickpocket’s trick, so old she should’ve spotted it a mile off, except that it was Lucifer, and somehow her survival instincts had never seemed to work around him - and he’d taken the key with him.

She could confront him...but then she’d have to explain why she’d had the key in her pocket, rather than logging it in evidence. And in any case...Lucifer had his ways around people. His word against hers...she didn’t want to imagine the likely outcome of that one, if he brought all his resources to bear on it, and for this he might.

She had made an under-the-table deal with a suspicious character. She had been prepared to steal from evidence to uphold this deal. She had withheld evidence about a case that she had been certain of even if she couldn’t prove it, and now, at the last, here she was, empty-handed.

She had sold her soul for nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look out for stray Murder Mysteries allusions.  
> Also - walking the line between enough apologies and too many apologies. It is difficult, as I tend to err on the latter side.

The worst thing-

The worst thing was the realisation, as the Goddess ranted and stormed and finally stormed off altogether, that Lucifer had been telling the truth, all this time. Maybe not about everything, but about this much. If Chloe had ever truly meant to give his mother this artefact they were all after. If she hadn’t been planning to destroy her life and her career with a double-cross...then she’d have drowned all of LA just to be rid of the granddaughter whose very existence seemed to disgust her.

Or-

No. Not quite the worst thing.

The worst thing of all was the other realisation, after that first rush of stomach-churning anger and terror and dread, that she could not even blame him for it.

Lucifer had heard her conspiring with someone who meant to murder his daughter, just weeks after an abduction that should, by rights, have killed her. Chloe knew how she would have taken that, if their places had been reversed.

Somehow, she hadn’t quite processed all that, before. She’d known it, or at least, she’d thought that the balance of evidence was that Lucifer had at least thought he was telling the truth, but she hadn’t _known_ it.

It didn’t make either of them innocent. Bianca Ruiz loved her son, and had no qualms with inflicting horrors on anyone else’s children. The Goddess herself, even, claimed to love Lucifer and Amenadiel, and to want nothing more than to return to the way things had been, this mythical past in which they had all been one happy family, without inconvenient half-human grandchildren to spoil the idyllic family picture. Even if Lucifer was telling the truth that Sabrina was innocent of murder - he had, an inconvenient voice in the back of her mind reminded her, never lied to her before - she’d been involved enough to know that it wasn’t the suicide it had been reported as. And- Sabrina had mentioned her friends back home once or twice. Including one Harvey Kinkle, Tommy Kinkle’s younger brother and Sabrina’s ex-boyfriend. The same boy that Lucifer claimed had pulled the trigger. That was too close a connection to be ignored.

And that was without thinking too hard about Gabriel’s horn, which you couldn’t have an apocalypse without, and which was now in Lucifer’s possession, or the fact that every mention of the Antichrist Chloe had found pointed to the end of the world. That had been Reese Getty’s pet theory too. The fact that Sabrina had been put through what sounded like one horror after another - murdered by witch-hunters, forced into marriage by something that claimed to be her own father, her own grandmother wanting to murder her, being abducted and nearly murdered by witch-hunters again - didn’t change where the evidence pointed.

It just...made it harder, now, not to see the coming apocalypse...less as the Antichrist stepping up to fulfil her destiny, the way Reese had painted it, but a traumatised and manipulated teenager finally deciding to put the whole world out of her misery.

Chloe had betrayed her. And now Lucifer had this artefact and he had Gabriel’s horn, and...was it possible that this had been the last straw?

Separating Sabrina from Trixie, whom she loved enough to nearly get herself killed trying to protect her, breaking her trust in Chloe - she thought there had been trust there, at least before all of this - and sending her away...was it possible that in all Chloe’s attempts to protect her family, all she’d done was put them in more danger?

But that- That came up hard against the reality of Lucifer.

Lucifer, who _liked_ the world. She believed that much of what she’d seen of him. Lucifer, who approached everything with an exhilarating, effervescent love of life that was infuriating and intoxicating and impossible to resist for long. Lucifer, who loved his daughter too much to arrange for any of this just to push her into a role in some grand plan. Chloe had seen the proof of that over and over again.

Which meant that this- That it wasn’t planned. Whatever was coming. Or if it was part of any plan, it wasn’t Lucifer’s. That really only left one person whose plan it could be, with the Goddess on Earth and without her powers.

And if God himself had set all of this in motion...if he’d arranged all of this, just to break Sabrina down to the point where destroying the world seemed like the better option...then if there was an objective morality out there, of which he was the arbiter, Chloe wanted no part in it. A god like that didn’t deserve to be used as a moral standard. A god like that wasn’t worth a prayer.

And if that was true, if that was the case...then nothing Chloe had read, none of the sources Chloe had been working from...none of them could be relied on. All of it was tainted information, and she was left with only what she had seen.

And what was that?

With Dan...she’d been horrified, when she’d learnt the truth. But, in an awful way, she hadn’t been _surprised_. Even when they had still been together, he’d lied to her. He’d pushed her into ignoring her instincts, talked down to her, handled every case as straightforwardly as possible, focusing on closing quickly, not getting to the truth. It felt...unfair...to think on that now, when Dan had done so much to try and change, but it was the way things had been between them. It was why, though she loved him still, and had even begun to trust him again, there was no hope for regaining what they had thought they had, and Chloe didn’t even want to. They were better friends than they had been partners. And when she’d found out the truth about Palmetto...everything had slid into place so easily, once she knew. So easily that she was ashamed she’d ever missed it, that she’d let her trust in the man she’d married override her common sense. There had been no nagging little details that didn’t make sense, no holes in his story. She had been shocked, she had been appalled...but she hadn’t found it difficult to believe.

Not this time.

And it wasn’t just the supernatural element. It was...everything she’d thought she knew about Lucifer, and about Sabrina.

Lucifer, who had driven Jimmy Barnes out of his mind, had once dropped a suspect from a height, who had thrown a man clean across a room one-handed and without any apparent effort-

And whom Chloe had known all of that about before she’d known _why_.

All her rationalisations for why she’d kept working with him still held, if she looked at it that way. 

Lucifer, who had never been using metaphors, but had always told the exact and literal truth, even if he didn’t always tell her all of it, and wouldn’t even let her falsely believe better of him than he deserved even when he hadn’t needed to say anything at all. Whose fixation on punishment had more to do with justice than she’d first given him credit for, and who...had headed a kingdom of eternal torment for all of human history. For all Lucifer’s protestations that he never _made_ anyone do anything...did that matter, when the punishment was eternal, and that was within his control? When punishment went beyond being proportionate retribution, when there could be no restitution and reform was impossible...then what was the point of it?

It was the sort of question that was meant for philosophers, and Chloe had never been one. She just knew that it didn’t sound right to her.

She knew just enough that she couldn’t ignore it, and too little to be able to properly judge. You couldn’t try a man on what she knew about Lucifer, let alone convict one. She needed more information. And, unfortunately, she’d already alienated everyone from which she might get one, except perhaps Amenadiel, and he had already made it quite clear that he wasn’t explaining a thing.

She needed information, and she had only one possible source of it. The Goddess. The Goddess, whom Chloe didn’t trust as far as she could throw her, but who at least believed that Chloe was on her side. And if she thought that, and that Chloe was too insignificant to get in her way...then she might be willing to tell at least part of the truth. Then it would be up to Chloe to try and disentangle bias and outright falsehood, just as she would with any other witness. She felt better for having decided that, having some clear idea of what to do next.

There came a knock on the wall beside her desk, and when Chloe looked up, Dan was there.

“Hey,” he said, holding up the file on Bianca before slapping it down on her desk.

Chloe managed a tired smile. “Hey.”

“You...sound pretty down for having just managed to nail Queen Tequila.”

Chloe shrugged, “Yeah, well...Chet’s still out there, and he’s still guilty of murder. This won’t be over until I’ve found him.”  
Dan paused.

“...Lucifer still hanging onto that grudge against Charlotte?”

Chloe went still. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “But- She confirmed it. She really is working for his mom.”

“But she wasn’t involved in the kidnapping.”

Chloe shrugged. “No, she wasn’t. But she’s still dangerous. I can’t say Lucifer doesn’t have his reasons for being suspicious of anyone willing to team up with her.”

She’d figured that out far too late, but she had got there in the end.

Dan rolled his eyes. “I know Charlotte’s clients range from ‘scumbag’ to ‘monster’, Chlo. You don’t need to remind me about that. I mean, look at Bianca Ruiz. Or...don’t, she’s still pretty pissed off at you and Charlotte both. And, I mean…” he gave a wry little half-grin, sly and pleased. “She turned on Bianca in the end. Maybe she’s turning over a new leaf.”

“Or maybe Bianca just wasn’t useful anymore.” Chloe glanced away. “Dan...can you take Trix tonight?”

Dan frowned at her. “...sure, but...why? I mean, I thought you had her for the rest of the week.”

“I do, I just…” Chloe breathed in. “We...had a fight. And...I was in the wrong, I see that now, and I have got to apologise to her, but I think she’d be happier with you for tonight. And...and there’s something I have to do, to fix things, before I can try and apologise.”

The furrow between Dan’s eyebrows deepened. “I mean...I didn’t have any plans for tonight, but...what was the fight about?”

Chloe didn’t want to admit to this part. “...what happened with the kidnapping. I- I said some things I shouldn’t have, because I was scared, and because they were after Sabrina...I...I sort of freaked out when I got home last night and found Olga had let her in without me.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Dan rubbed his face. “Look...you know I think it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Lucifer’s whole devil thing.”

“Yeah. I know.” It even had the benefit of being mostly true. Except- “Sabrina said they’d come after her before. A Massachusetts chapter of the same group. Before she ever met Lucifer.”

“But Sabrina’s family are Satanists, aren’t they? So, sort of connected. Doesn’t make it their _fault_ , but…” he shrugged. “I’m not...saying I’m not pissed at Lucifer for charging off after Charlotte, but...that wasn’t on him. But I get it. You’re seeing Linda about it, right?”

Chloe shifted awkwardly. “Trixie is.”

“Maybe you should pencil in a few sessions. I did. I mean, she offered, but…”

Chloe shrugged. “I...don’t want to take advantage. I mean...I know she offered a cut-rate because it was her ex-husband who set it all up, but that’s not her responsibility either.”

Dan shifted, looking faintly guilty. “Maybe it is. I know. I just...where else was I going to find a therapist that good on a cop’s salary?”

“I don’t know! I just...I’m fine. I mean, Trixie and Sabrina had the worst of it.”

“If you say so.” Dan sighed. “I’m just saying...I get it. But it’s not the kid’s fault her entire family has a Satan complex either.”  
“I know.” Chloe rubbed her eyes. “I know. I’m just...freaked out, is all. I mean...we never did get a proper explanation for what happened in that church.”

“Four separate cases of spontaneous combustion,” Dan agreed. “What are the odds? The FBI hasn’t been able to figure that one out yet either. Couldn’t have happened to nicer people.”

Chloe’s stomach clenched. “...yeah,” she said weakly. “I just...I saw it happen.”

The fire, and the screams, and the stench. They’d been willing to murder a teenager and a little girl for their god, but they hadn’t deserved to die like that.

“Must’ve been pretty disturbing.”

Sabrina, floating above them all, her white hair blown by an unseen wind, her eyes wide and white and glowing from edge to edge, her face eerily serene as her abductors burned alive beneath her.

“...you could say that.” Chloe swallowed. “I’ll...I’ll think about it. But please...can you just look after Trixie for tonight?”

“Sure.” Dan looked almost taken aback. “I’ll pick her up from your place after I’ve finished my paperwork.”

“Great. Thanks.” Chloe rubbed her eyes. “Dan-”

She didn’t want to ask this. She didn’t want to know-

“Yeah?”

“When- When did it start?” Chloe swallowed. “With Malcolm, I mean. How did you end up...”

A shadow flashed across Dan’s face.

“I...I don’t know,” he admitted. “It didn’t seem that big a deal, at first.”

Chloe’s stomach twisted.

“I mean,” Dan added, “It’s not an excuse, but...everyone cut a few procedural corners here and there. It didn’t seem like that big a deal up until Palmetto. After that…” he shrugged. “Guess I thought I was just too deep in to get out again.”

It...made sense, now she thought about it. He’d been scrambling, trying to cover his tracks, and she...she’d found herself all at once a pariah for trying to poke at the story that had let Dan keep his job. She’d have turned him in in a heartbeat if she’d known, or she hoped she would. And she would’ve been right to do it, even if Dan had cleaned up his act since he got off with a demotion for crimes that would’ve seen Chloe drummed off the force and into a cell in quite short order.

“But...if you had to put a date to it…”

She had to know. She had to know if she hadn’t noticed the change when it happened, or if it had always been there, a part of Dan’s personality even when he’d still been mostly on the straight and narrow.

Dan shook his head. “What...what’s the point of asking? I know what I did, Chloe-”

“I know. I just…” Chloe’s eyes flicked down to her desk. “I need to know if I noticed anything change and just...didn’t want to admit it.”

Dan looked uneasy. “Why do you need to know? It happened, it’s over. Are you- You don’t think I’d do it again.”  
“No- I don’t know.” Chloe shook her head. “I guess I always thought I was a better judge of character than that.”

Dan shrugged. “I...don’t know. It didn’t- It’s not like i just leapt right into shooting people. It seemed...pretty harmless, at first. I was just making cases go smoother.”

“Right up until you weren’t.”

Dan shifted. “Yeah. Look- Do we have to talk about this? I don’t know what more I can _do_ at this point.”

“You don’t- I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I just...need to work some things out.”

She could imagine, all too clearly, the progression of it now. Maybe he’d started by making evidence disappear - nothing to endanger a case, but if something just happened to point in the wrong direction, there was really no point logging it in evidence, was there. It had probably all seemed entirely sensible and rational. It had seemed that way to her, this time. If there was going to be a next time, it would probably be easier. There couldn’t be a next time. She’d gone too far to come back from already. She did not need to go further.

“Dan,” she added, as he got up to go. “Be careful. With- With Charlotte. There’s...I don’t trust her.”

Dan gave a faint, dismissive little bob of the head, not quite a nod. “I’m gonna be fine, Chloe. And I need to get this to records, so...meet you at yours?”

Chloe nodded back, a little jerkily. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll...see you there, then.”

Which left her alone, with a thousand questions, and only one source of partial, unreliable answers, which was nonetheless the best that she could find.

Well, she’d dealt with situations like this before. Everyone lied, except Lucifer, and just because he never directly lied had never stopped him from being dishonest. She’d always got to the bottom of things before, and she wasn’t about to stop now.

She really ought to have known, the moment she had that thought, that it wasn’t going to be that simple.

* * *

When Chloe got there, after seeing Trixie off with Dan, Charlotte Richards’ apartment, the temporary one she’d moved into since she and her husband split, was empty, and she wasn’t answering her phone.

She checked her phone. It was there, the text she’d sent asking for a meeting, and the Goddess’s curt response, telling her to come to the apartment tonight. The hairs went up on the back of her neck.

She could have just got caught up at the office, or somewhere else. She could be going after Lucifer personally, trying to get whatever this artefact they’d both wanted had been. Except- She’d already known Lucifer had it when she agreed to this meeting. She might just have decided to stand Chloe up - it wasn’t as if her son was at all averse to the idea, after all - but Chloe didn’t think so, somehow.

Something in all this smelt off to Chloe. And, thankfully, no member of the family Morningstar yet seemed to have figured out how to disable phone tracking.

The Goddess was still at her office-

Except-

No, she was on the move. But...not in the direction of her apartment, where Chloe was waiting. Instead...Chloe narrowed her eyes. Instead, she was making for Linda’s office, despite it being well outside Linda’s usual office hours.

Something in all of this had gone wrong, badly. Which meant that Chloe needed to find out what, and how, and the best place to start looking for _that_ was at the offices of Richards and Wheeler.

Unfortunately, once again the universe was conspiring against her, as by the time she got to Charlotte Richards’ law firm, the Goddess had been the last to leave, and even the cleaners were packing up to go. Chloe wasn’t getting in without a warrant, and she wasn’t _getting_ a warrant for ‘stood me up for a meeting to explain all the freaky supernatural shit that’s going on in my life right now’. 

That left her with just one person to call.

“Hello?” Linda’s voice was heavy, drowsy, and it sounded like she’d had most of a bottle of wine already. Chloe couldn’t exactly fault the impulse, the way things had been for her lately. After everything with her ex-husband, Linda deserved a month-long luxury cruise somewhere warm and sunny, not an increased workload and Chloe offloading her panic onto her, but...she was all Chloe had.

“Hi, Linda. It’s Chloe.” Chloe swallowed. “Is there...a reason why Lucifer’s mom is apparently camping out at your office right now?”

“What?” Linda’s voice sharpened, all muzziness suddenly gone. “Why- Why would she be doing that? It’s not like my hours are a secret-”

“I don’t know. She was supposed to meet me at her apartment to- to give me some information, but-”

“What kind of information?”

Chloe closed her eyes. “It’s...really not important. Supernatural stuff. I can’t...I can’t just rely on what Lucifer says. Anyway, she didn’t turn up, so I tracked her phone, and apparently she went straight from work to your office.”

“...I’m not at my office.”

“I know you aren’t. Do you- Are you sure it’s you she’s looking for? Amenadiel has an office there too, doesn’t he?”  
“He used to,” Linda said, sounding a little taken aback. “But he gave up the lease a while back, since he’s no longer posing as a therapist. But I don’t see what else she could be after - it’s not as though I keep my files on any of my more...supernatural...patients at the office.”

“You have files on all this?”

“Of course. And they’re private. Doctor-patient confidentiality, I’m sure you understand.”

“I know,” Chloe said quickly, heart sinking.

“And...if you want information on how all this works, Lucifer’s mother…may not be the best source out there.”

“I know that too. I just...Lucifer and I aren’t exactly on good terms right now.” It stung to admit it, but Linda would probably find out soon enough either way.

“Ah.” It was a therapist’s ‘ah’, calm and cool and irritatingly measured. Apparently Linda had already heard about this.

“I saw Sabrina kill four people in front of me,” Chloe said quietly. “I just...I didn’t know what to do. And now it turns out that wasn’t the first time, but I don’t know whether she actually murdered anyone or whether there was some kind of coercion involved…”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

Chloe’s stomach clenched. That was not as good as saying that Sabrina had committed murders before. Doctor-patient confidentiality didn’t work that way, or it wouldn’t work at all. All the same...it wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for.

“Okay, but...therapists are allowed to break confidentiality for the planning of future crimes, yes?”

“I...yes, that’s right.”

“Then...can you tell me one thing?” Chloe swallowed. “The Apocalypse, is it...is it true that that’s what they’re planning.”

There was silence on the other end, and then, low.

“You talked to Reese.”

“I did. He...seemed to have more information than I did, even if I didn’t trust anything else about him. So...is it true?”

“No.”

Chloe breathed out, long and low. She’d been right. It wasn’t planned. Which meant-

It wasn’t certain proof that Lucifer had been right, all this time, that God really did have a plan for everyone and that plan had nothing to do with what was best for anyone, but what suited his own obscure purposes. But it sure as hell was suggestive.

It wasn’t certain proof of either Sabrina or Lucifer’s innocence, either, except- Lucifer had been a prisoner in Hell as much as any damned soul, Linda had said, and Linda, at least, could be trusted to know. How much of the ‘Lord of Hell’ thing was a real administrative position - did Hell _have_ administration? - or just...being the top dog in the highest-security prison in the universe. You couldn’t blame the workings of an unjust system on the prisoner who happened to have come out on top. 

“I need to talk to Lucifer.”

* * *

Lux had been packed and noisy when Chloe got there, but Lucifer wasn’t making his usual rounds, and when she pressed her finger to the new and absurdly high-tech lock Lucifer had installed after Sabrina came along, it came back red. Unrecognised. He’d locked her out. The intercom wasn’t working either, and Patrick the bartender went nervous and apologetic when Chloe asked him about it. Lucifer wasn’t receiving visitors and yes, he’d mentioned her by name and she wasn’t allowed up either.

Short of scaling the outside of the building, she was out.

And that had all been before this morning, when she’d got a call from the precinct to say that a body had been found in Eagle Rock, and that it was a weird one.

‘Weird’, she thought, staring down at the body, might have been an understatement.

She’d seen burns like these before. Not so localised, but the pattern was there, even with the stink of bleach overpowering any lingering trace of sulphur. There was no trace left of the man’s face, just as there hadn’t been with the bodies they’d found at the Church of the Repentant Innocents, but the hands were whole enough to take prints from this time, where at the church they’d had to check the living members of the congregation against the church’s records, and ask questions of the rest of the congregation, since the burns had even melted the kidnappers’ teeth enough to make dental identification impossible.

And the body had been dumped professionally. Bath in bleach, shaved all over...that sort of thing cost money.

After everything Chloe had thought, all her rationalisations...there was only one direction all this pointed in. Someone with the power to summon hellfire to burn a man virtually to a crisp, and with the money to have it professionally covered up.

She really was going to have to call Lucifer.

“Can I borrow your phone?” she asked, cutting Ella off in mid-flow.

“What- Oh, sure. Uh...something wrong with yours?”

“...yeah,” Chloe lied, holding out a hand. “I need to call Lucifer.”

“Oh. Yeah. Funny he didn’t show up for this, huh? Normally we can’t keep him away from the weird ones.”

“Yeah. Weird.” Chloe was already scrolling to find Lucifer’s number, which Ella had saved under a smiling devil emoji. “Ella...would you say there’s something familiar about this one?”

Ella blinked, then looked down at the body.

“Ohhh...yeah. Weird. I mean...I did not think human spontaneous combustion was even a _thing_ , but...it’s not exactly the same. I mean, that was full-body, this is a lot more targeted. I don’t even know if it was the same cause. I mean, we never did figure out what caused it at the church, but...you were there, right, was there any sign of…”

“But if you had to guess?” Chloe interrupted. 

Ella shrugged. “I dunno. Blowtorch, maybe? Or...deep fat fryer...we’re going to have to hand this one over to the coroner to get a clearer answer, though.”

“Right.”

 _That_ wasn’t reassuring at all. Hellfire would do this. But it hadn’t...Chloe remembered how quickly it had spread, how quickly it had _killed_ . This was so much more contained. More _controlled_ , perhaps. And that...she couldn’t see that as a good sign.

“Hello, Miss Lopez, what brings you to-”

“Lucifer.” Chloe swallowed. The line at the other end was silent. “I need- Can you and Sabrina come to the precinct, please.”

There was a brief, shocked silence.

“Decided to press charges for murder by magic after all?” Lucifer asked, barbed and poisonously pleasant. “Or does my mother still have you doing her dirty work?”

“It’s…” Chloe sighed, and took a few careful steps away and out of Ella’s earshot, lowering her voice to a near-whisper. “I have a body here. Dead by hellfire. And I know that you weren’t at home to visitors last night. So unless you can prove where you were last night-”

“Here. At home. With Sabrina. Amenadiel can vouch for us, since you couldn’t possibly take _my_ word for anything, and my spawn is also _clearly_ untrustworthy-”

“I’m _sorry_ , Lucifer!” Chloe snapped. “I- I was freaking out, I didn’t know who to trust. It’s not an excuse, but you- you have no idea how terrifying all this is. I should have- I should have trusted you. I mean...we both wanted the same thing, in the end?”

“And what ‘same thing’ is that?”

“That artefact, out of your mom’s hands.” Chloe swallowed. “I know you have...no reason to believe me, but I was never planning to give it to her. I just- I needed the eggs.”

“...you were planning to betray her the whole time.” Lucifer’s voice was soft, almost awed. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to hear. Chloe nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her.

“Yeah.” Chloe closed her eyes. “I mean...I wasn’t going to give it to you either. But I didn’t know who to trust, and until I knew…”

“That’s a very convenient story, Detective.”

“It’s the _truth_! I’m not...I’m not saying that I’m...ready to trust you again, not completely. But...if that woman is a Goddess, then clearly that doesn’t mean what I thought it did.” Omnibenevolence certainly didn’t appear to be part of the qualifications, at least, and if she had been omniscient, Chloe could not have tricked her so easily. “I- I was terrified. Of all of this. I still am. But then...then it felt like I was drowning in it. And I thought…”

“No, no, I completely understand. Who wouldn’t trust a Goddess over the Devil.”

“I wouldn’t!” Chloe snapped. “And when I went back and looked...if even half of the sources I found are accurate, your parents have caused more human misery than you ever did. Nobody ever talks about _you_ drowning whole civilisations or sending plagues. Even the Job thing was mostly just your dad being an asshole, and that’s the worst thing I could find any real support for, unless you want me to believe that Dante really did get a guided tour of Hell.”

“He didn’t,” Lucifer said at the other end, sounding faintly as if she’d hit him over the head with a two-by-four.

Chloe huffed out a breath. “Okay, that’s...I’m going to have questions about that later, but now I need to know who in this city is capable of this, because right now I’ve got Ella talking about industrial deep fat fryers and other ways to nearly burn a man’s head off, when we both know that wasn’t what happened at that church. If we want to find this guy’s killer.”

“‘This guy’ being?”

“We have no idea! Ella’s taking his prints now, so we should have an ID soon, but whoever he is, he’s...I haven’t seen burns like this anywhere but the church. I need to know who could have done this, other than you and Sabrina. And I need to know where you two were when it happened. Or- If this was...if it was self-defence, we can prove that too, if you cooperate-”

“You were right,” Lucifer said, his voice distant.

“What- It was- Okay. Okay, now I definitely need you to-”

“I _don’t_ believe you.”

He hung up.

Chloe glared down at the phone, outraged and hurt and utterly unsurprised, all at once.

She-

She had betrayed him. There was no way around that. She’d worked with his mother and hidden it from him and maybe they’d been working towards the same goal...but if Lucifer had protested that, after working with someone who had made no secret of wanting Trixie dead, would Chloe have been at all inclined to listen? She thought not.

But-

They’d been working to the same ends. And maybe, maybe if she’d got her hands on the artefact, whatever it was, she could have used that as a proof of good faith- But she didn’t have it. And she didn’t have anything else to offer. And Lucifer still hadn’t told her where he and Sabrina had been last night, or what it might have to do with their murder victim.

The logical thing to do would, under any other circumstances, have been to bring them in for questioning. Except that here...Sabrina’s only real link to this, so far as anyone else knew, was having been a witness to a similar case, which the FBI still had yet to find a reasonable explanation for, and which Chloe herself had also witnessed. The lieutenant had given her and Lucifer a lot of latitude, just so long as they got results, but this time...she didn’t even know this was supernatural. Ella might be right, it could just be someone who got their head shoved into a deep-fat fryer for all Chloe knew, but-

She couldn’t stop seeing the faces of the dead from the church. The preacher and the missionaries. So badly burned that they couldn’t even ID their teeth. That it was _possible_ for one teenage girl to do that...and Sabrina might be the Antichrist, but she wasn’t the only witch in the world.

And unfortunately, Chloe’s list of resources when it came to the supernatural was short, and growing shorter.

How- How many cases like this had she missed? She’d thought, before this, that all those cases had been entirely mundane except for the small detail that the investigation included Lucifer, but...but what if they hadn’t been?

Chloe breathed in, deep. She could look over past cases later. For now, she needed to focus on _this_ murder, and worry about the others later. So. She would run the prints. She would talk to the coroner. She would check Lucifer’s alibi with Amenadiel, and see what he had to say. And then, if they hadn’t come up with a single rational explanation for this, she was going to call Maze, and hope that she hadn’t burnt all her bridges beyond all hope of repair.

* * *

The prints came back almost immediately. Chloe almost wished they hadn’t.

Chet Ruiz. Chet Ruiz, who had been on the run. Chet Ruiz, who was no longer on the run, who had turned up stripped naked and burnt beyond all recognition in a warehouse in Eagle Point for no reason anyone could immediately see. Plenty of people hated Bianca Ruiz, but with Bianca in jail and awaiting trial, couldn’t get to her.

Except-

Chet had every reason to blame Lucifer for his mother’s arrest. If he’d decided to act on that... or...Chet had stolen from Lucifer. Not deliberately, perhaps, but Chloe was all too well-acquainted with how poorly Lucifer took theft of what was _his_ . She wanted to believe it was the former, just self-defence...except that even then, Lucifer would’ve had a hundred non-lethal options. Who else in LA could have done it but those two? Maze, maybe. She was a demon, after all, and none of Chloe’s sources had been able to agree on what, exactly, that was supposed to mean. How many more of them were there in LA? Was- Was _everyone_ at Lux...no. None of the supernatural beings she knew she’d met had been remotely subtle, she had no reason to expect any others would be.

Amenadiel was an angel, so hellfire didn’t seem likely to be his MO. The Goddess...was a Goddess, and one without her powers, if Lucifer was to be believed. She almost wished she could believe it had been her, but that wasn’t where the evidence pointed.

And Chet Ruiz- He’d been willing to kill a man who’d done nothing to him just to prove himself to his mother, to be let in on a business that killed thousands every year...but it was hard to convince herself that anyone deserved to die the way he had. The way the missionaries had, too, but...it was probably a failing in her, but whether they’d deserved it or not, Chloe couldn’t be sorry that they were dead. Not after what they’d been prepared to do to Trixie.

For now, she had to notify the family. Bianca would be informed by the warden of the jail where she was being held until her trial, as a known flight risk. That left just one member of the Ruiz family free for her to notify and question about enemies that might use a similar method of murder, hoping against hope that something would come up that would mean that she had a chance of seeing justice done.

Unfortunately, the interview provided no such easy answers. Not that Chloe had been expecting a straightforward list of people who liked to kill with blowtorches or deep-fat fryers, but still...it was disappointing. Worse, though, was the rest of the conversation.  
“I know you were the one who put my mother in prison. I also know you were after Chet, so I know what you think of my family. But I loved my brother. He didn’t deserve to die. Especially not like that.”

Chloe’s stomach twisted. Here she was, making excuses for Lucifer, knowing that he or Sabrina were the likeliest culprits, and Hector Ruiz had just lost his brother. Maybe Chet had made the first move or maybe he hadn’t, but he’d died in one of the most horrific ways imaginable, and there was nothing that could convince her that this had been a proportionate response, when Sabrina could shrug off _getting her throat slit_ as if it was nothing.

“No-one deserves to die like that,” she said, and meant it. “Look, I’m going to work this case as carefully and fairly as I would any other case. I promise you.”

She promised herself, as well. No more steps down the slippery slope. No more hiding from evidence that didn’t add up. Whatever the outcome of the case was, her personal feelings couldn’t get in the way. She’d done it before, and she’d do it again.

Of course, that resolution was somewhat undermined when she got out of the interview room to hear that Lucifer had arrived, and was in the precinct morgue, and why _wouldn’t_ they let him in? Wasn’t he consulting on this case? No, he hadn’t said so, but he consulted on most of her other weird cases, so why not this one?

It was...disturbing, how thoroughly the Devil had worked his way into the fabric of the precinct, to the point where he was down there in the morgue right now, and nobody had ever thought to stop him.

Except-

If he’d been the one to do this, why would he need to see the body? Logically, he would already know what condition it had been in.

Chloe hurried her steps, making for the morgue.

She found Lucifer standing over Chet Ruiz’s body, staring down at the ruined face with an unreadable expression. 

“I thought you said Bianca was our last case together,” Chloe said to his back.

“I thought it would be.” Lucifer’s mouth was pressed into a hard line. “Apparently my Father had other plans.”

“Your Father,” Chloe repeated. “Did he- Lucifer, you are not telling me that _God_ literally smote this man down.”

“No.” Lucifer’s eyes didn’t leave the ruin that had once been Chet Ruiz’s face. He’d been handsome, if you liked the type, Chloe remembered, even if his personality had been entirely off-putting. No-one would credit that now. “Just a figure of speech.”

“So...who could’ve done this? Other than you and Sabrina, I mean. Or…”

“I did tell you this wasn’t me, Detective. Or Sabrina. _She_ spent most of last night trying to convince Amenadiel to teach her Ancient Sumerian. She speaks Greek and Latin already and wants to branch out.”

The sheer glowing pride in his voice at that was almost unbearable.

“She’s a smart girl,” Chloe agreed. “But you already knew that.”  
“Smart enough to pay to conceal a murder, you mean?” Lucifer gave a low, bitter bark of laughter. “If she _had_ , you’d never have found this much of him, and you’d certainly have been longer about identifying him. My spawn has many fine qualities, but subtlety has never been one of them. It must be a Spellman thing.”

That...wasn’t exactly reassuring. It was also staggeringly myopic when it came to Lucifer’s own drama-queen tendencies, but Chloe was used to that.

“But that doesn’t mean she _couldn’t_ have done this.”

Lucifer snorted. “Not unless she’s capable of being in two places at once. She isn’t, just to be clear,” he added. “And she’s only been using hellfire since December, so she hasn’t got this much control over it yet. ‘Set things on fire’ is about her lot, never mind this targeted stuff.”

Chloe nodded. “Okay. So this wasn’t her.”

It felt like being out from under a weight she hadn’t realised was there before. 

“Could...could Maze do this?” she asked. “Or- I’m guessing you could.”

“Lightbringer, remember. Of course I could. That doesn’t mean I _did_.” Lucifer rolled his eyes. “And Maze is one of the Lilim, so she couldn’t summon hellfire even if she didn’t think it was cheating.”

Chloe blinked.

“...okay. I...am going to need an explanation for some of that.”

“I don’t feel like giving one.” Lucifer’s lips thinned as he stared down at the corpse.

Chloe gritted her teeth. “Lucifer- Look, I get it, you’re mad at me. But someone is dead, and if you’re going to be part of this investigation-”

“And what do you imagine you’ll do when you _find_ whoever was responsible for this?” Lucifer demanded.

“I don’t know! And I _can’t_ know until I know what I’m dealing with. So, if you could give me that explanation before I have to work that out for myself, I’d appreciate it!”

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, then. Just so we’re clear, what makes you think this was hellfire? Beyond the obvious ‘we’re going to have to come up with a new degree of burns’, I mean.”

Chloe paused. “...you’re saying this wasn’t?” She paused, and then added. “Well, uh...there’s no trace of any accelerant on the body, and even after the bath in bleach you’d expect trace elements, especially since the burns are sixth-degree. Also...well...it didn’t escape my notice that Chet had good reason to be pissed off at at least two supernatural entities last night. I thought he might’ve tried for some revenge.”

Lucifer gave her a sideways look.

“...well, you can’t smell sulphur over the bleach,” he said after a second, his voice just a little uneven. “Or what you’d smell if it were one of my more reputable siblings.”

“What is that, exactly.”

“Petrichor. Ozone.” He grinned, all teeth, merciless. “No need to try and cover that up, it’d just look like a lightning strike.”

“...apart from the part where the only part affected is his head.”

“Apart from that, yeah.” Lucifer frowned down at the body.

Chloe swallowed, desperately relieved. “So...this _wasn’t_ supernatural, and I need to refocus the investigation on an assassin with a blowtorch?” Ella was already going through the forensic evidence, at least, they hadn’t lost much time-

“I didn’t say that.” Lucifer still hadn’t looked away from the corpse. Chloe’s hope shrivelled.

“So...you’re saying it is?”

“I’m _saying_ , Detective, that I don’t know.” Lucifer’s lips drew back, baring teeth. “If this was Hellfire...then you’re looking for one of the Six Hundred and Sixty-Six, and they’re a little above your pay grade.”

Chloe gritted her teeth. “That’s not your call to make. So. What are these guys?”

“My siblings, of course.” Lucifer’s mouth twitched. “Or did you think I managed a whole revolt against Heaven alone?”

Chloe’s breath caught in her throat. That was right, half the sources she’d found had referenced other angels who fell with Lucifer-

“Okay,” she managed, a bit shakily. “So...are they here too?”

“They shouldn’t be.” Lucifer’s mouth was a hard line now, and the look on his face was terrible. “I ended up having to forbid them from coming up here after a while. Too many attempts to restart the rebellion on Earth. We lost. No reason to take it out on you humans, especially when Dad hardly even seemed to notice anyway.”

“Is...is Maze-”

“No. Maze is one of the Lilim. They’re...related, but not the same thing.”

She’d found that term in her reading, too. And, when she’d gone back and taken a closer look, it had supported the idea that, God or not, Lucifer’s dad was still a great big bag of dicks.

“...so, that thing about Lilith...that’s true too?”

“Hmm - Oh, yes.” Lucifer’s expression darkened, if possible, still further. “Lilith is ruling in Hell now, as regent in my absence, and she’s free to do so for the rest of eternity if she likes. There aren’t enough of the original Six Hundred left to challenge her, and even if there were, none of them could gain enough support alone to take the throne, let alone hold it.”

“...which is why that Baphomet guy wanted Sabrina,” Chloe filled in. “Because she’s-”

“Yes.” Lucifer’s mouth twisted. “Only an angel can rule Hell, it’s built into the workings of the place. And, unfortunately, angels in Hell are in pretty short supply. Baphomet was one of the Lilim, so he needed Sabrina twice over if he wanted his attempts to impersonate me to stick.”

Somehow, a lot about Lucifer made more sense now Chloe stopped, stepped back, and realised he’d been living in what sounded like an up-to-eleven version of _Game of Thrones_ for centuries.

“Okay. I’m...going to need names, descriptions-” she paused. “Wait. Are these the only possible culprits, or…”

Lucifer gave a considering little hum. “If it’s hellfire, they are. If it isn’t...then it’s probably another angel. This does _look_ like a smiting, after all. I thought at first it might have been Raguel, but there wouldn’t be this much left if it had been.”

Chloe’s eyes flicked from the body to Lucifer, and back again.

“Raguel. That’s...the Archangel of Justice, right?”

“You did your homework, Detective. Yes, that’s him. Was him, rather. He’s rather out of favour upstairs these days.” There was an edge of something like satisfaction in Lucifer’s voice now.

Chloe couldn’t imagine why the Archangel of Justice might be unpopular in Heaven...but none of the answers were good.

“And he’s...here? In LA?”

“On Earth, at least.” Lucifer glanced away. “I don’t know where, exactly, and I don’t want to know.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. There was something there, something she wanted to poke at.

“...sounds like you two didn’t get on.”

“We don’t.”

“Seems...odd.”

“Does it?”

Chloe shrugged. “You said it yourself. You punish evil, you don’t cause it. And...I went back over the files. It doesn’t actually make sense for God to put the embodiment of evil in charge of punishing evildoers.”

“You should tell my siblings that.” Lucifer’s voice was bitter. 

“Is that why-” Chloe cut herself off. “I just...Archangel of Justice and all. Seems like punishment would be just up his alley.”

“It is.” Lucifer paused. “But that’s not quite what it means.”

“What?”

“Raguel. You can call him the Archangel of Justice, it’s one of his better nicknames, but it’s not what he was created for. It’s not what the name means.”

“What his…”

“It’s how angels work.” Lucifer’s voice was flat. He could’ve been talking about the weather. “The name is the thing is the name. It’s why I don’t answer to....to what I was called before. It’s not what I am anymore. And for Raguel...he’s the Vengeance of God. Or he was.”

Something in Chloe went cold.

The Vengeance of God. Vengeance, not justice.

“Is he...I mean...did he...was he the one who threw you out?”

“No.” Lucifer grimaced. “That was Michael. But Raguel...was the start of it.”

“How-”

“Detective, we do have a killer to find, don’t we?”

It was an obvious evasion. She’d gotten too close again.

She nodded. “Well, whoever it was did this, they had to have enough familiarity with the way things are up here to take forensic countermeasures. That’s got to narrow things down a bit.” She paused, and then added. “Are you coming?”

Lucifer looked at her, and she couldn’t read his expression.

“If the Six Hundred really are involved, I’m going to have to,” he said sourly. “How did you put it? Oh, yes. I don’t _trust_ you...but I need the eggs.”

It wasn’t the reconciliation Chloe might have hoped for. But then, you had to work for those.

* * *

For once, Ella had nothing.

“I’ve done the best I could, you guys!” she said miserably. “But I’ve gone over every bit of physical evidence at the scene, and the coroner has checked the body over so thoroughly the morticians aren’t going to have much left to do, and for all either of us can tell, he just sort of exploded into flames of his own accord.”

Chloe cast a wary glance at Lucifer, who seemed quite unaffected. But then, all of this was probably quite normal for him.

“There is one thing I’m waiting on, though,” Ella added, “But it’s a long shot. So, basically all we know is that someone had to drive there to dump the body right?”

“Not _necessarily…_ ” Lucifer muttered. Chloe wanted to elbow him in the side, didn’t quite dare.

Ella frowned at the two of them, and pressed on. “So, the tech team is checking the vicinity for cameras, but it’s such a remote place, so...don’t get your hopes up.”

Lucifer grimaced. “I fear you may be right about that one. Sadly, the only witness to this one is my dear old dad. And the murderers, of course. Can’t forget about them.”

Ella nodded. “Oh. Right. _Your dad_ is always watching…” she trailed off. “...wait a second. That gives me an idea.”

Lucifer blinked. “...it does?”

“Yeah! Satellite imaging takes sporadic photos of...well... _everything_ , so…”

“...so there might be footage of the killer going to or from the site,” Chloe finished. 

In any other case that would have been a godse- a windfall. In this one...she didn’t know what these Six Hundred were capable of - Lucifer had been quite close-mouthed on that subject - but if teleportation was on that list, this might be a wild goose chase. And if it wasn’t? How was she supposed to _arrest_ a fallen angel?

Ella turned around, already at her computer, to point a pen at Chloe. “ _Exactly_ . I mean, it’s not much up on the cameras, and it might be we just get an unmarked grey sedan with no clear license number, but...worth a shot, so, thank you, Lucifer.”  
“Welcome,” Lucifer said distractedly. “Er- I have a few...contacts...in the underworld that might have some idea of where Chet Ruiz’s killer is. But I think I might’ve asked too many favours from them during the kidnapping debacle…”

Contacts in the underworld. It wasn’t even a lie. If it was the underworld she thought he meant, logically Lucifer could probably just _ask_ Chet Ruiz who had killed him. Had he ever done that before? But if he could...why would he have needed her help finding Delilah’s killer at all, when he could have just gone and asked the shooter who hired him and then gone from there?

Ella blinked. “...wow. I did not know that. Still, you used to do that favours thing, right? I heard people talking about that. Guess I didn’t consider that’d leave you with a few shady contacts. So, you think they’d know who had a grudge against the Ruizes?”

“...among other things, yes. Or if they don’t know already, they can find out.”

He was being cagey again. And maybe it would push their fragile truce to breaking point, but Chloe wanted to be in the room for this. She wanted to _know_.

“I’ll join you,” she said. “I want to be there for this.”  
Lucifer didn’t even glance at her. “I’m...not sure that’s the best idea.”

“Yeah,” Ella agreed, “I mean...having a cop in the room... _maybe_ not the best idea?”

“I’ll be in plainclothes, and I’m not _that_ recognisable. Not as a cop, anyway.”

“No, she has a point,” Lucifer said quickly. “The...person...I’ll be dealing with will expect me to be alone.”

Chloe crossed her arms. “I’ll stay out of sight if you think it’s necessary, but I- I need to be there.”

She’d been hiding from all this too long as it was. Time she knew the worst of it.

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. “Need to be there to be sure I’m telling you everything?” he asked, needling.

“Can you honestly tell me you’ve always been entirely forthcoming before?” Chloe demanded.

“I never lied to you-”

“That’s not the same thing-!”

“...okay,” Ella cut in. “I do not know what this is all about, but whatever it is, can you have it somewhere that isn’t my lab? It’s...kinda putting me off.”  
“Apologies, Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said, glancing around.

Chloe looked away. “Yeah. Sorry, Ella, things have been...stressed...since the kidnapping. How long should it take you to get those satellite images?”  
“Not long, but...long enough for Lucifer to talk to his ‘underworld connections’. Maybe they’ll be more use.”

“I shouldn’t put money on it,” Lucifer said, rather sourly. “Detective, I think the interview room is free…”

It wasn’t, as it turned out. In the end, Lucifer ended up paying off one of the lab techs to leave the lab to ‘go and buy themselves something pretty’, and watched them go with a faintly disapproving expression.

Chloe’s hackles went up.

“You know, if you’re trying to convince me that you and your parents are just as bad as each other, that wouldn’t be a bad start,” she said shortly, once they were alone.

“I told you, I never _make_ them do anything. It was a free choice, and he made it. The wonders of free will in action.”

Chloe gritted her teeth. “A free choice he’d never have made if you hadn’t dangled the temptation in front of him - and don’t say you don’t do that, because I literally saw you hold out the money.”

“Which he could’ve refused.”

Chloe threw up her hands. “I don’t- That doesn’t make it _right_!”

“...to buy five minutes alone in a lab that doesn’t seem to be in use right now?”

“To bribe a lab tech. For any purpose. You could’ve just _asked_.”

Lucifer blinked. “...and neglecting to pay for the use of his space would be the more ethical decision?”

Chloe gritted her teeth. “It’s…” she broke off. “Just say what you want to say.”  
There was a long, stiff pause.

“‘Just as bad as each other’,” Lucifer said after a moment. “What happened to ‘I’d rather trust a Goddess than the Devil’?”

Chloe sighed. “I was lying to her,” she said simply. “I told you. I didn’t...you’re right, I didn’t trust you. I was…” she rubbed her eyes. “I...I didn’t want to make the same mistake I did with Dan,” she admitted, her voice low and pained. “I trusted him, even after all the evidence was starting to point his way. If I’d dug a bit deeper, if I hadn’t let what I thought I knew about him get in the way...maybe Malcolm would never have got anywhere near Trixie. Or you.”

Lucifer let out a breath. “You can’t blame yourself for that, Detective,” he said, low. “It’s my brother’s fault that Malcolm came back from Hell to bother you in the first place. And the only reason Amenadiel bothered was to get me to go back.”

Chloe’s stomach twisted. She liked Amenadiel, as far as she knew him, but- He’d done that? He’d brought a dangerous man, a killer, back from the dead, just to manipulate Lucifer?

“Did...did your dad order it?”

Lucifer grimaced. “Not _directly_ , but Amenadiel thought it was what he’d want. Not that either of us really _knows_. Dad hasn’t spoken to me since I was booted out of the Silver City, and he wasn’t what you’d call the talkative type even before that. And now it turns out Amenadiel was the favourite all along, which of course he’s just turned into something else to angst over-”

“Wait.” Chloe blinked at him. “...you just said your dad didn’t talk to you, so how do you know…”

“Prophecy. Ancient Sumerian. From that book Zeke Moore was smuggling for my dear old mum.”

“So…” Chloe still had to wrap her head around this. “Your dad...never actually said that to you? I mean...how’d the author of this book know?”

“I have no idea, but it seems to be an early nephilim text, so probably one of their parents mentioned it.”

Chloe shook her head. “...unbelievable. You know, the more I hear about your dad, the more I feel like he shouldn’t be running a lemonade stand, let alone a universe.”

Lucifer actually looked faintly baffled. “I tell Sabrina she’s my favourite all the time,” he muttered, and then, more loudly. “And that’s a bit of a change from what you were saying yesterday.”

“Yeah, well.” Chloe drew in a breath. “I’m not...not proud of it. And you have every right to be mad. I...I thought I was doing the right thing, preventing either of you from getting that book, but...I should’ve listened. I should’ve asked for an explanation. I just...I thought I could find other evidence without having to ask. And when I found it, I was so hung up on what common knowledge said that I didn’t look at the facts until it was too late.”  
“And what _facts_ are those?”

Chloe lifted her chin. “That apparently the universe is ruled by a petty tyrant who was willing to turn a woman out of paradise for wanting to be on top having sex...or demanding equality, honestly the texts were a bit unclear...and another one for eating apples-”

“That one was actually a euphemism.”

“-then proceeded to demand that a man murder his son to please him. And if that’s in the sources written by people who actually _like_ your father, I hate to think what else is getting left out.” Chloe’s shoulders slumped. “And...there’s you. And Sabrina. Amenadiel was right. I _do_ know you. And maybe I have been lying to myself this whole time. I mean…” a faint, hysteric laugh bubbled up from the pit of her stomach. “I _shot_ you. For being annoying. I wouldn’t- I don’t think I’d have done it if I hadn’t believed you, just a little. But then you bled, and-” she broke off. “Was...that surprised you. Was...was there anything going on, at the time? I mean, anything unusual…?”

“I was temporarily mortal. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll clear up after I get to Boston.”

Right. Of course. Because the move was still on. Maybe she’d been stupid, to expect they’d be able to patch things up this easily.

“...wait, this is still...it’s still affecting you? Do you know why-?”

“I do.” Lucifer’s jaw was tight. “Sorry if I’m not about to share it with you. Trust issues, you know how it is.”

“Lucifer, I’m not…” Chloe breathed in, deeply. “I know what I said was wrong. I know I hurt you and Sabrina both, but I _never-_ I never wanted you _dead_.”

Lucifer was very still.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Chloe asked, wooden.

“...I don’t know.” Lucifer wasn’t looking at her.

“Fine. That’s…” She hadn’t meant a betrayal, exactly - they’d been working towards the same goal, even - and she hadn’t had the chance to carry one out. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to make this better,” she admitted, her voice raw, forcing the words out. “I don’t...I’m sorry.”

“I’m not looking for an _apology_ , Detective. If you want to apologise to anyone, make it Sabrina.”

That sent another curl of guilt through her. Sabrina, who had been forced into too many things by too many people, who was in LA to try and get past what sounded like one long string of traumas that sounded more like the plot of the sort of television show that made a fetish of pain than anything real. Sabrina, who Chloe had accused of a murder she might have been forced into. Who deserved a fair hearing, either way. Chloe had all but decided she was guilty based on Reese Getty’s conspiracy theories and a few misjudged comments that could’ve meant anything.

“I didn’t think you’d want me speaking to her again.”

Lucifer shrugged. “I don’t decide who my spawn sees. If she wants to talk to you, she will.”

Chloe looked away. “Let’s...let’s get this case solved, first. If this is one of these Six Hundred...what are they doing here?”

“I can make a few guesses.” Lucifer’s mouth was pressed tight. “The Three Plague Kings have made attempts on Sabrina’s life before, to stop Baphomet from going through with his apocalypse plans-”

“I’m sorry, _apocalypse_ plans?”

“ _Thwarted_ apocalypse plans,” Lucifer said testily. “Part of the idea of forcing Sabrina to marry him and then taking over Hell and Earth. What he was planning to do when he got to LA, I cannot say, but if the Plague Kings are still after Sabrina...then that’s- that’s _bad_.”

“How powerful are they?” Chloe asked. “Compared to her, I mean?”

Lucifer shook his head. “Sabrina...is more powerful than I am, at the moment. One of the unfortunate downsides of choosing to live among humans. And without my wings, the Plague Kings are more powerful than I am too. Even if I were to return to Hell in this state, I’d wind up assassinated before the century was out.”

“But- Hang on, you _have_ your wings. Wasn’t that the whole point of the auction, while I was still digging into Palmetto?”

“Yes. I burnt them.”

“ _What_?”

They’d been...so beautiful. Fake, of course, or so she’d thought at the time, but...beautiful. And now...funny, she’d have expected to feel more at the sight of real angel wings than that.

Lucifer looked cagey. “I was trying to make a point! To Father, and to Amenadiel. That I wasn’t going back and if they tried to drag me, they’d still have to find someone else to rule Hell before too long.”

His scars, Chloe thought. His explanation. He’d had Maze cut off two of his limbs, to keep from going back, despite knowing that if he was ever dragged back anyway, it was the next thing to a death sentence. How desperate would you have to be to make that seem like a reasonable choice to make?

And that...that had been before Malcolm woke up. Which means that Amenadiel had known all of that, and kept trying anyway.

“The point is, without them, my powers are limited, and while the Plague Kings are of a decidedly lesser order than I am, that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. Clue’s right there in the name. Or it could be any one of the other remaining members of the Six Hundred who’ve decided to take advantage of my weakness. But I can’t think of any reason why any of them would want to go after Chet Ruiz. Even if this were the Plague Kings…” he paused, his eyes narrowing. “This isn't how they usually operate. Oh, they can summon hellfire if they really _want_ to, but it’s not their usual MO. Now, if this guy had been found gnawed to death by rats or eaten alive by maggots or infected with rabies from a swarm of bats…”

“But that doesn’t entirely rule them out.” Chloe rubbed her eyes. “We can stand around speculating until another body drops, but let’s look at the facts we have. Ella can’t find a single trace of evidence of how Chet Ruiz was killed, and the burns indicate fire behaving in a way fire doesn’t naturally, which does suggest something supernatural was involved. But whoever did this had the body dumped professionally, suggesting that they had money to burn doing it, and they knew enough about how this world works to take forensic countermeasures, but not enough of them to disguise Chet’s identity still further by removing his fingerprints to delay an identification. And they went after _Chet_. Not you, not Sabrina. Chet.” She swallowed. “Are there...I know there are other witches out there. Can any of them use hellfire?”

“Sabrina is the fourth in human history.” There was nothing but pride in Lucifer’s voice at that. “And, before you ask, so far as I know I didn’t father any of the others.”

“Okay, so it’s unlikely to be one of them.”

“Yes.” Lucifer paused. “...Raguel,” he said slowly. “Raguel’s been on Earth since not long after the end of my rebellion. It wouldn’t be hellfire, from him - he’s not exactly _fallen_ even if nobody in the Silver City likes him that much. Didn’t think he’d care about covering his tracks - not like he had any qualms about what he did to- about taking vengeance on Dad’s behalf in front of half the Silver City, but if he’s as worried as Amenadiel about not letting human law enforcement get celestial DNA on record…”

“But then why- why would he go after Chet?”

Lucifer gave her a confused look. “...because that’s what he’s _for_ . His Purpose. I told you, he isn’t _fallen_ . Take vengeance on evildoers. That’s his _job_. And when Raguel’s the one doing it, there isn’t generally enough left of them even to turn up downstairs.”

Arresting an unfallen angel seemed even less possible, somehow, than arresting a fallen one, but-

But if she’d meant a word of what she’d said, if she truly believed it...then even if God had ordered this Raguel to smite Chet Ruiz down, it didn’t come before human justice. Maybe the universe was ruled by a petty tyrant, maybe the only objective morality there _was_ was silence and obedience to Lucifer’s abusive father. It didn’t matter. Humans made their own laws. Murder was murder. Whatever Chet Ruiz had done, he had deserved a fair trial and a chance to speak in his own defence, or to pay someone else to speak for him, and a judgement from a jury of his peers. And right now, Chloe wasn’t inclined to take God as a fair enough judge to trust him to do the sentencing.

“Okay,” she said. “So how do we find him?”

“I don’t know!” Lucifer snapped. “It’s not like we’re on greeting-card terms! I haven’t seen Raguel since I was kicked out of Heaven, and I wouldn’t know he was even up here if Amenadiel hadn’t told me they turned him out too not long after! Earth wasn’t even inhabited outside Eden. I mean, presumably he’s somewhere in LA if he was able to find Chet at all, but-”

“But the body was dumped professionally,” Chloe interrupted. “So either he knows enough to carry out his own forensic countermeasures, or he hired someone who did. Either way...Ella was right. The satellite images. They’ll...can he teleport?”

“...what- No! No, he’s as wingless as I am.”

“So he’d have had to drive there.”

And, all at once, things were simple. Just another murder, just another murderer. They had a lead. It wasn’t a great lead, but it was what they had.

“I’ll follow up with Ella,” Chloe said quickly. “If she finds anything, I’ll call you.”

“Yes.” Lucifer had his phone out now, frowning down at the screen. “I...am going to need to find my brother, apparently. Maybe he’ll have more idea of what Raguel is up to than I do.”

Chloe nodded. “Good idea. You find him, I’ll get the evidence we need to make a charge stick - we can’t just accuse him without evidence.”

She half-expected a quip, a line about how they worked so well together. Lucifer didn’t give her one. Just nodded, and walked away, and Chloe didn’t know how to bridge the gulf between them.

* * *

Either _someone_ upstairs was more reasonable than Chloe was currently being forced to confront, or they really, _really_ didn’t like Raguel.

And now she was starting to sound like Lucifer, even inside her own head.

Whatever the reason, there had been only one vehicle parked anywhere near the warehouse where Chet’s body had been dumped, and that vehicle was-

“Not exactly keeping a low profile, are they?” she said, staring at the screen. 

Ella grimaced. “I _know_ , right? It’s like they wanted to get caught.”

“Or didn’t think we could do anything about it if we did,” Chloe said grimly.

It added so much to Lucifer’s infuriating certainty that consequences could not touch him. Perhaps they couldn't. He was only _temporarily_ mortal...but what did that even mean, when Chloe had seen him get up after being shot without a scratch on him? Did it come and go? But if it did...why?

None of which had anything to with this murder or, very soon, with Chloe. Whatever it was, Lucifer was quite sure it would have cleared up by the time he got to Boston, for whatever reason, whether it was something to do with LA itself or the loss of his wings or...god, the alignment of the _stars_ for all Chloe knew.

“Okay. Now we just need to find the van. Can’t be too hard. How many vans with dandelions on the side can there be in LA? I’ll call Lucifer, see if he’s free to come.”

Or if he’d want to. Now they’d figured out the Six Hundred probably weren’t involved, the threat he’d turned up to investigate was more-or-less gone. If this Raguel just wandered around punishing the wicked...what did that matter to Lucifer, who did, after all, claim to be doing the same thing?

But he had said he would find Raguel, and Lucifer, Chloe reminded herself, didn’t lie. Except- She paused. A horrible thought struck her. Lucifer _hadn’t_ said he’d bring Raguel to her. Just that he’d look for him. He’d already said that she didn’t have a chance of dealing with this the normal, the _human_ way. What did that leave but- She thought of the church, the smell of sulphur and cooking meat, and swallowed, and reached for her phone.

It went straight to voicemail, which was the first bad sign.

“Lucifer,” she said, “We’ve found the vehicle used for the body dump. It’s a white van with a dandelion design on the side. Ella’s looking for a match now, we should have something in the next few minutes. I’ll text you the address when we have it. Are you-” she glanced at Ella. “Have you got any closer to that lead we were talking about? Call me back.”

She clicked off with the awful, resigned knowledge that she’d be lucky if he even listened to it, and she knew, okay? She _knew_ she’d screwed up. She’d trusted too little, or too much, and she might have lost Lucifer’s friendship and any chance at- at whatever it was they’d been cautiously moving towards before Lucifer’s disappearance and Sabrina’s arrival. But- Even if she had succeeded, all the damage would have been to herself. It was her career she’d been destroying by preparing to double-cross the Goddess. Lucifer might not have got his artefact, but his mother wouldn’t either, and by the sound of it, that had been the goal. She’d said...terrible things, and it was no-one’s responsibility to forgive her for them, but a man was _dead_. Not a good man, maybe, but far from the worst they’d ever had to seek justice for.

And for all that she’d managed to solve cases without Lucifer before he came along and would no doubt manage again once he’d left LA for good - painful as it was to think of crime-scenes without him - this case was...it belonged to his world, not hers. She needed a guide in it, and Lucifer-

Wasn’t actually her only option.

“Ella?” she asked. “Do we have an address yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.” 

Chloe breathed in, deep, and dialled again.

“Maze? I am- So, so sorry. For everything. I panicked. It was...awful of me, I shouldn’t have said...any of it. And I’m sorry I have to ask this now, but...I need your help.”

There was a very long pause.

“You’ve got some nerve, Decker.”

“I know.” Chloe shut her eyes. “I...I know. I’ve been an awful friend to you. And I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to hang up on me right now, but-”

“But you need me for something. Figures.”

Chloe swallowed. “I...would appreciate your help,” she agreed. “But the apology stands, either way. And- I never meant to kick you out of our apartment. I’m sorry if I made you think that, but-”  
“Doesn’t really mean much when you wouldn’t have called at all if you didn’t need me.”

It was hard to argue with that.

“...yeah, that’s…” Chloe swallowed. “That’s fair. For what it’s worth, though...I really am sorry. I- Anything I try to say about why I did it sounds like an excuse, but-”

Maze snorted. “Please. Like you’re the first human who ever had a crisis about this. It’s not- You really thought I’d hurt Trixie?”

Chloe’s shoulders slumped. “I...I didn’t know. I mean…all your torture talk was...borderline...when I thought it was just a sex thing, but-”

“Oh, it is, _very definitely_ , a sex thing. Only way to get any torture in up here without having to skip town. And I wouldn’t do any of that to the kid. I’m- I mean, okay, I’m a demon, but I’m not a _monster_.”

That was- Reassuring, horribly, but. “Yes, but you…” Chloe glanced around, and lowered her voice. “You still _tortured_ people. For centuries. It’s...even if I didn’t think you’d do that to Trix, you do...you do see why that might have worried me?”

“It’s what I was _literally_ created for!” Maze snapped. “Hell isn’t...Hell doesn’t work on Earth rules. If I tried to live by Earth rules down there, I’d wind up dead no matter how close to Lucifer I was!”

“I...I’m starting to get that. Which...was why I needed the help. I need...someone who knows about all of this. Someone I can trust.”

There was a very long pause, and then Maze gave a long, beleaguered sigh.

“If I say no you’re just going to get yourself killed trying to arrest Lucifer’s mom, aren’t you?”

“One of his brothers,” Chloe corrected. “And- You don’t have to come, but-”

“Just tell me the address, Decker.”

“I’m still waiting on it - I’ll text it to you,” Chloe said quickly, the words tumbling over each other. “I- Maze. I cannot _begin_ to thank you-”

“Oh, don’t think you’re getting off _that_ easy. You’re doing my laundry for the next couple of months, _including_ the specialty items.”

“Done,” Chloe agreed, too grateful they were talking again to waste time remembering what those specialty items were. “I’ll text you the address when we have it and meet you there?”

“Sounds good. And, Decker?”

Chloe paused. “Yeah?”

“We’re good. You didn’t say anything Linda didn’t. Not to me, anyway. And the princess is old enough to take her own revenge.”

The princess. Sabrina. Well, that nickname suddenly made a lot more sense. Because...she was an actual princess. Of Hell. Did that mean Lucifer technically had diplomatic immunity? Foreign head of state, and all?

She snorted at the thought as she hung up.

“...what was that about?” Ella asked, looking up.

“Just Maze. We...had an argument, after the church. I...said a lot of things I shouldn’t’ve.”

“Seems like you’ve been making a habit of that lately.” Ella frowned at her. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Chloe said quickly, trying not to think about the smell of sulphur, the dimness of the church and the strange, cold light of the fires. “Just...rough few weeks, is all. I’ll be fine. Have you found that van yet?”  
“Cameras picked it up,” Ella said, turning back to her computer. “Let me just- Yep, there it is. Same van, same dandelions, and this time we got a license number.”

“Great. Let me text Maze the address.”  
  


* * *

She called Lucifer again before she headed out, just in case he picked up this time. He didn’t. Chloe tried to tell herself she wasn’t irritated, and failed. She’d sent him a text explaining the situation anyway, because she was a _goddamn professional_ who kept her partners updated, and because if the power disparity was as great as Lucifer said it was, she’d need all the help she could get when the time came to do...whatever she was going to do...with Raguel.

Arresting him was the goal, but...Lucifer had been right. They didn’t have any systems set up for dealing with this kind of threat, and Chloe would sound like a madwoman if she tried to convince anyone they needed it. Which meant that Chloe was going to need help, little as she wanted to admit it.

Maze’s motorbike was parked in the same lot when Chloe got there, but there was no sign of Maze.

No immediate sign, anyway, as the moment Chloe looked across the street - Well, there was the van. And there was Maze, leaning quite casually against it, tossing a knife from hand to hand and grinning like a shark at two hazmat-suited figures with a stretcher lying dropped on the floor between them.

“Hey!” Chloe yelled. “LAPD! Maze, you can’t just-”

Maze shrugged. “You wanted them caught. I caught them.”

“I- There isn’t even a warrant out yet! And they have- Oh, god-”

She’d finally got close enough to see the body on the stretcher. It was a man. And it was definitely dead. Quite gruesomely so, from what she could see from here, the body wrapped in clear plastic.

“...okay,” she said, a little shakily. “I think we can call that probable cause.”

She looked at the two hazmat-suited women. “Take your hoods off, slowly.” No point in getting the firearm out with Maze right there and more menacing than Chloe could ever hope to be.

The two women complied instantly, revealing dark hair and worried faces.

“I- I swear,” the taller of the two said quickly. “This really isn’t what it looks like…”

Maze rolled her eyes. “That’s what _everyone_ says.”

“I’d say that depends on what you think this looks like,” Chloe said levelly. “Step away from the body, please.”

The women backed away quickly, hands still raised.

“It’s not...okay, I know this looks really suspicious,” the taller woman started again, “But we can explain. I’m Ava, and this is my sister Kathleen.”

“It’s so much less fun when they cooperate,” Maze muttered, more to Chloe than the sisters and - Chloe hoped - mostly for effect. Although given Maze’s career for most of eternity had apparently involved tormenting sinners in literal Hell...maybe this counted as an improvement. 

Kathleen shot Maze a nervous glance and took over the conversation from there.

“We...uh….we run Dandy Lyon Cleaners?” she managed, also eyeing Maze’s knives with some trepidation. “Er- Lyon’s our last name...but, look, I swear, this guy...he died of a heart attack. He was already dead by the time we got here - he lived alone, and nobody noticed anything but the smell for a few days before his nephew came to check on him. We’re not killers, I promise.”

“I get that a lot too,” Maze remarked, sounding bored, inspecting her nails on one hand while flipping the knife in the other. “Most of them don’t start talking straight away.”

“We are not going to be torturing anyone,” Chloe said, through gritted teeth. “All right. You’re...in aftermath services, then?”

“Yes!” Ava sounded desperately relieved. “It’s...icky, we know, but totally legit - we’ve got all the certification if you need to see-”

“No, I believe you.” Chloe straightened slightly. “If you could answer a few questions for us?”

The sisters exchanged looks. 

“Uh...sure?” Ava said, a little helplessly. “I mean...we’re not being arrested, are we?”

“Not yet,” Chloe said evenly, taking out a notebook. “Can you tell us what your van was doing outside of an abandoned warehouse in Eagle Rock at three am last night?”

“I’m...pretty sure you’re mistaken,” Ava said, a frown carving a little furrow between her eyes as she glanced at her sister for confirmation. “We were nowhere near that area.”

Kathleen, though, looked guilty. “...well…”

The look of recognition slid across Ava’s face like a stain being wiped across a linoleum floor. “Ugh, no. Eagle Rock. Do _not_ tell me you went to see Fred again!”

“Ex-boyfriend?” Maze asked, sounding almost sympathetic. “You’re better off without them. Trust me.” 

Still not over what had happened with Amenadiel, then. Chloe had half-forgotten it, amidst all the chaos of the kidnap and everything that had followed.

“Much as I hate to agree with the scary knife lady…” Ava muttered, “You said you were done with him!”  
“I _was_!” Kathleen hissed back. “Until I ran into him at Jamba Juice!”

Chloe sighed. “Can you give me his full name and address, to check your alibi?”

Kathleen looked, if anything, even more nervous now. “I...uh...sure?”

She rattled off a name, an address - Chloe took them both down. 

“Did you see anything unusual while you were there?” she asked. “Around the warehouse?”

“Not...not really?” Kathleen swallowed. “I...I wasn’t really paying much attention. I mean...it was three in the morning, I had other things on my mind…”

“Okay. Any other vehicles in the area around the warehouse…?”  
“Not that I noticed.”

“Mysterious lights from just above the warehouse?” Maze contributed.

“What?” Kathleen was blinking at her now.

Maze snorted. “Well, since our body had to get there somehow and yours was the only vehicle in the right place at the right time, it’s either you dumped it or it was beamed down from the Starship Enterprise-”

“Oh-!” Kathleen managed a slightly strangled laugh. “Uh...no. No.”

“Starship Enterprise, really?” Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow at Maze.

Maze shrugged. “I’ve been crashing at Ella’s place. She’s into it.”

“Look, I’m _sorry_ ,” Kathleen said, high and slightly shrill. “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you- You said he was dumped last night? Can...can you be sure it was three o’clock? I mean…”

“Yours was the only vehicle within convenience corpse-carting distance of that warehouse, so-” Chloe started.

“I never told you our body was a ‘he’,” Maze interrupted. “Decker, did you mention that?”

“...not that I recall.”

Kathleen was looking honestly panicky now. “But- I mean...I just _assumed_ …”

“Yeah,” Ava put in. “That’s not...you can’t arrest someone just based on that.”

They couldn’t, she was right. Not that it had ever stopped any of her colleagues, but Chloe had joined the force hoping to be better than that. And it could just be a coincidence - Lucifer might say that Raguel was ‘as wingless as he was’, but what did that actually _mean_ in terms of levels of power?

She’d seen Lucifer throw a man across a room with barely any effort, had seen doors ripped clean off their hinges. Not with anything supernatural, just brute physical strength. And if that was Lucifer wingless, drastically reduced in power, then didn’t it follow that another angel might have similar capabilities? Enough, say, to carry the body himself.

Except- No, that didn’t make sense, someone would have _seen_ -

She thought, again, of Lucifer. Of the way he could be halfway across the room one moment and right in front of you the next. She didn’t know the limits of that, yet. She didn’t know that he’d ever trust her enough to tell her. But she couldn’t ask Maze that with the Lyons there. And, after all, if the alibi fell through, it wouldn’t be hard to find them again unless they made a run for it.  
“Don’t leave town,” she said, the old policing trick that was absolutely unenforceable, but very few people ever bothered to check. “We may have more questions for you later.”

Maze looked almost disappointed. “What? We’re letting them-”

“Yes, we are. For now.”

If their alibi fell through, that was justification enough to bring the Lyon sisters in, and maybe get some better answers. If they were involved at all. If an angel really needed to hire a couple of forensic cleaners to dump a body for him. Why- Why would an angel even bother with a body dump, anyway? Bodies were found in alleys all over this town. And with a murder method that left even Ella baffled, why bother with the forensic countermeasures? Sabrina hadn’t even needed to touch her- Chloe’s mind flinched from the word ‘victims’. They had been her abductors, and ready to kill her if she hadn’t killed them first - nearly had, even, before Sabrina had even thought of striking back.

And yet...the murder weapon was undeniably supernatural, and if Sabrina’s ability to summon hellfire was nearly unique... _nearly_. Not entirely. The fourth in human history, Lucifer had said, and the other three hadn’t been his...though that didn’t rule out some other form of infernal heritage.

Not for the first time, Chloe wondered if she’d made the right choice. She wanted to have all the information at her fingertips. To have something like a database which she could plug information into and come out with a definitive answer of ‘angel’ or ‘witch’ or ‘demon’ or ‘human’, and know what to do in any case. But she didn’t, and maybe without this case she’d never have got past feeling ashamed of herself long enough to ask. She could rectify that now.

“Maze,” she said as they walked away, heading for Chloe’s car. “What- What can you tell me about…” she paused, trying to formulate a question that wouldn’t be too leading, wouldn’t incline Maze’s thoughts any given way. “Do angels have DNA?”

Maze frowned. “I...don’t know. It’s never come up. Not like upstairs is big on DNA testing.” She paused. “Amenadiel was worried about it, when you got that vial of Lucifer’s blood.”

“So…that might be the reason for the forensic countermeasures?” Chloe asked. It made _sense_ , except- Except that if you were trying to cover up the existence of the supernatural, there had to be better ways to do that than burning a man’s head and nothing else, when there were any number of other murder methods to choose from. Or-

She thought about Lucifer. About what he was capable of. About what _Sabrina_ was capable of- In theory, Lucifer had to be even more powerful, she knew, but somehow none of his shows of power had frightened her the way it had when it was Sabrina, hanging in the air and buffeted by a wind Chloe had not felt. 

And then she thought about Jurassic Park. That had only been dinosaurs. What might be done, with the DNA of an angel?

It was the stuff of pure science-fiction, except for all the ways in which Lucifer’s very existence shattered all attempts at scientific detachment. All the same, a chill went through Chloe at the thought of it. Of all the ways that DNA could be used, if anyone could decode it.

Maze shrugged. “Might be. Or it might’ve just been to cover up whoever moved the body.”

“Well, those two are in full hazmat gear, so if that is it, it wasn’t them,” Chloe pointed out, glancing back at the Lyons, now loading their grisly cargo into the van.

“What I don’t get is, why dump it at all?” Maze said, fumbling in a pocket for her phone.

Chloe looked around. “What?”

“Plenty of alleys in LA,” Maze said casually. “You find bodies in them all the time. Why head out all the way to Eagle Rock?”

“...unless the scene of the murder itself was important,” Chloe finished for her.

People died all the time in this city. Were murdered all the time. And certainly Sabrina’s hellfire hadn’t left a trace on the surrounding environment. Which meant that either this had been less controlled - it was hardly possible to credit that, when Sabrina had burnt her abductors to blackened bones, and most of Chet Ruiz was still intact - or it had happened somewhere with...maybe not lots of witnesses, because that could be reported, but some tie to their killer.

Chet Ruiz had been on the run. Where would he have hidden? Who would he have trusted? And would there be other bodies waiting for them, when they found their crime scene? Or scattered more widely, better-hidden? The point of a body dump was to delay the discovery that a murder had happened at all - or prevent it entirely, if you could dispose of the body thoroughly enough - and to cut the investigation off from evidence at the original crime scene that might lead to a conviction.

“Yeah-” Maze was looking down at her phone, frowning. “...fuck does he want me there for?” she muttered.

Chloe looked around. “Lucifer?”

“Yeah.” Maze tucked the phone away. “Someone finally managed to get past that fancy new security system.”

Chloe froze.

“They- Someone got into the penthouse?” she asked. “Is- Are they both okay? What happened?”

“Don’t know.” Maze’s jaw was tight. “Princess’s supposed to be seeing Linda today.”

She likely needed it. Chloe tried not to think about what Sabrina might have to say, about how she’d come to see Trixie and...what? Reassure herself that Trixie was all right, or reassure Trixie of the same? Just to get away from Lucifer descending into quite uncharacteristic smothering overprotectiveness - well, maybe not that uncharacteristic, Chloe thought, remembering the way he’d been with her around Wesley Cabot’s murder - or for some other reason of her own. And having Chloe send her away with nothing but suspicion and distrust, after having almost died trying to protect Trixie from the Innocents’ plans for them both.

If Chloe deserved to lose her and Lucifer’s friendship for anything, that was it. She’d said a lot of awful things in her panic and her fear, and done things she regretted, but those had all been...sensible, as she saw it. Only what she’d said to Sabrina had been cruel.

“So...she wasn’t there? Is anyone hurt?” Her own phone buzzed. Chloe ignored it.

Maze glared, not so much at Chloe as the world at large. “Don’t know. Lucifer’d probably be talking more if everything was fine, though.”

Chloe’s heart twisted. It was ridiculous to be afraid, she’d seen how capable Sabrina was of defending herself- 

But if this was Raguel...whatever Sabrina’s part in Tommy Kinkle’s death had been, and Chloe had yet to get a sensible answer for that herself, except that Baphomet and his coercion had had a part to play, but for an angel of vengeance…would that matter?

She was being paranoid, she told herself firmly. Just because the supernatural existed and apparently had a role in Chloe’s own life didn’t mean that _everything_ was supernatural.

“Should I come?” she asked, impulsively.

Maze shook her head. “It’ll probably just be me reminding Lucifer I don’t work for him anymore and, even if I did, I’m not a babysitter.”

“I know, but- Shit, what now-” her phone was buzzing again. She dug it out and answered. “Yeah?”

“Chloe?” It was Dan’s voice at the other end. “We’ve got another body.”

Chloe’s fingers tightened on the phone. “Where?”

“Lux.”

* * *

It wasn’t the first, or second, or even the third time that Lux had played a role in one of their investigations. But it was the first time Chloe had seen the place like this, with a burnt and blackened body lying sprawled in front of the elevator up to Lucifer’s penthouse, crime scene tape and uniforms and Lucifer all but beside himself with rage and worry, the twin scents of ozone and petrichor almost choking-thick in the air.

“This wasn’t me,” he said, almost as soon as he caught sight of her. “I- I know how this looks, Detective, but-”

“I know it wasn’t you.” Chloe swallowed. “ _You_ wouldn’t have needed to blow out the security system to get in. Were you here?”  
“No.” Lucifer was staring down at the body. It was tall, tattooed, fully-clothed this time, without the forensic countermeasures that had been taken with Chet. One of the staff at Lux, Chloe assumed - she didn’t know them all, though she knew Lucifer did, and took the same perverse delight in doing them favours as he did for everyone at the precinct. Delilah had started as a waitress here, Lucifer had told her once. The first friend he’d made in LA, for all that they’d all but dropped out of one another’s lives after she’d made the big-time.

She wanted to reach up and put a hand on his shoulder, to offer comfort, but after everything she wasn’t sure if she’d be welcome.

“Can you identify him?” she asked quietly. 

A muscle worked in Lucifer’s jaw. “It’s Patrick.”

It took a moment or two to place the name. One of the bartenders, Chloe thought. The one that made cow eyes at Maze, or was that someone else? She didn’t remember. She’d been to Lux she didn’t know how many times, open and closed, and gotten to know a few names, here and there, but not enough. She must have walked past Patrick a dozen times without speaking to him.

“Whoever did it, he must’ve surprised them,” Dan put in, coming up behind Chloe. “So far as Ella can tell, they-”

“I can tell it!” Ella was only half a step behind Dan. “So. Very different place from our last body dump.”

“Extremely,” Lucifer agreed, his voice distant, his eyes flickering between the corpse and Ella, his mouth twisting up into something that was very nearly a snarl.

“Yeah, but get this - going by the way the body fell, the lack of any signs of a struggle...this must’ve been pretty much instantaneous.”

Chloe’s stomach churned. He wouldn’t even have had time to scream, she thought, and didn’t know if that made it better or worse. 

“That’s…” Dan was staring at the body in fascinated horror. “That...isn’t possible, is it? I mean...that amount of damage? Even a blowtorch would take more time than that, and it’s not like he was tied up or anything, he could’ve easily gotten away-”

“Apparently he couldn’t.” Lucifer’s voice cut through like a blade, coldly furious in a way that promised trouble.

Ella nodded. “I- I don’t know, you guys! This is…” she shook her head. “It’s like those bodies at the church after the kidnapping. I don’t- I have no idea what could do this. By the look of it he just- sort of keeled over mid-step with his head burnt mostly off.”

Across the body, Chloe met Lucifer’s eyes.

“Not-” Ella said hastily. “I mean...I’m sorry, Lucifer. I didn’t mean-”

Lucifer shook his head, like a dog trying to clear its ears of water, and didn’t reply.  
“Were they-” Dan glanced at the elevator. “Did they take anything?”

Chloe’s mind screeched to a halt. She hadn’t even thought-

“Well, the safe’s been just about ripped out of the wall,” Ella said, wincing. “I do _not_ think Spackle is going to cover that. And it looks...this is going to sound stupid...it looks like it was torn open. We’re dusting it for prints now, but-”

“Wait, torn open...by hand?” Dan was gaping. “That’s not...that’s physically impossible…”

“What made you think that’s what happened?” Chloe asked, rather than say anything, casting another look at Lucifer and hoping for some support.

Ella twisted her hands together. “It’s...this is weird. Like- The weirdest case I’ve ever worked on. There are _nail-marks_ in the wall, and in the safe and I don’t...I have no idea what could even _do_ that.”

“Like... _fingernail_ marks?” Dan asked. He sounded incredulous. Chloe couldn’t blame him.

“Yeah! It’s...I mean...hysterical strength, _maybe_ , but…” Ella’s voice was wavering. She didn’t sound any more convinced of what she was saying than the rest of them, and it made Chloe wonder - should she tell?

Except-

No. Who would believe her, who hadn’t seen with their own eyes what had happened in the church? _She_ wouldn’t have believed her, if she hadn’t been there. And if Lucifer chose not to back her up...she’d seen careers destroyed over less, and even if she’d been willing to risk it to save the world...she wasn’t, this time. What good could it do?

“So this was a robbery-gone-wrong,” Chloe summarised.

Ella’s mouth twisted. “If it was...they weren’t interested in the money. Which- Woah, that was a _lot_ of money. Seriously, Luce, what the hell? Are you secretly a dragon or something?”

“Or something.” Lucifer’s voice was still grim, and there was danger in every syllable.

Ella sighed. “I’m sorry, but...whatever they were after, your place was just _trashed_ . This...might just’ve been simple vandalism, but I don’t see why that’d be worth _killing_ someone over-”

“Vandalism,” Lucifer choked out, staring down at the body.

“Did...did Patrick have any enemies?” Chloe asked, half-reaching out before drawing her hand back sharply, remembering how little her touch would be welcomed now.

Lucifer cast a withering look at her. “None capable of doing _this_ , no.”

“So, odds are that they were after you,” Dan filled in. “Okay. No saying how many enemies you’ve got. Do you even know?”

“God himself and all the forces of Heaven aren’t enough for you?” Lucifer said waspishly. He shook himself. “I’m going to take a look.”

He brushed past Chloe, circling wide around Patrick’s dead body and making for the elevator.

Chloe waited just a few seconds, and then made her excuses and went after him.

“So,” she said quietly, as soon as the elevator doors had slid shut, trapping her and Lucifer on opposite sides of the elevator. “Was this Raguel?”

“I don’t know.” Lucifer’s mouth twisted. “Though Patrick is...almost absurdly blameless. I can’t picture Raguel-” he shook his head. “He needs something he can twist into blame first, usually.”

“...would working for you be enough?” Chloe asked. “Even if he didn’t know?”

“It might. Though vandalism isn’t Raguel’s style. If he was here, he wanted something.” Lucifer scowled. “And I have a good idea what he was after.”

“He might’ve been after you,” Chloe said quietly. “Except- Why would he leave, then? You always come back here in the end. Or- _Could_ he kill you?”

“Yes.” Lucifer glanced sidelong at her. “I hope you aren’t thinking of joining forces with him, next.”

“Of course not!” Chloe snapped. “Lucifer- I’ve said I was sorry so many times that it barely sounds like a word anymore, but if it means _anything_ , I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was planning. If we’d talked about it, then maybe-” she broke off. “I can’t change what I did, or what I said. But can you at least believe I’m trying to make up for it now?” she swallowed. “If there’s a threat to your life or anyone else’s, I need to know about it, if I’m going to have your back. If we’re going to get justice for what happened to Patrick.”

It was a low blow, invoking the name of the dead bartender. She didn’t know if he and Lucifer had ever been friendly, but it seemed likely - Lucifer was friendly with everyone, even if the number of people he seemed to consider _friends_ was rather lower - and...it wasn’t _untrue_ , at least.

There was a long, tense silence.

“Do you remember,” Lucifer said after a few moments, “I told you that Azrael’s blade was the reason why what seemed like half of LA was getting stab-happy last November?”

That had all but slipped Chloe’s mind, but-

“Yes,” she said, her heartbeat quickening. “Is that- Azrael is the Angel of Death, right?”

“That’s right. Little Rae-Rae.” There was something dark and sardonic in Lucifer’s voice now. “She and Raguel always did have more in common than you’d think. Well, she...mislaid...her blade, and it ended up down here. Humans can’t handle divinity - Dad got through five Adams before he figured that one out - and divine artefacts always work according to their nature.”

“...meaning?”

“Meaning, it does things to you people’s minds.” Lucifer wasn’t looking at her now. “If you pick up that blade...it _wants_ to kill. That’s what it’s _for_. Nothing to do with the person doing the stabbing, but the blade...it picks up on any grievance a person might had, magnifying it, right up until it’s the only thing in their world. Daniel nearly sliced me up over stealing his pudding when he got ahold of it, so you can imagine-”

“Wait,” Chloe interrupted, throat tight and mouth dry with horror. “Wait, you mean...all those stabbings...they were…”

She’d never gotten a proper explanation for what had caused the massacre at the yoga studio, when the ‘cult’ theory had fallen through, but now-

They’d only made one arrest in that case, and that had been dismissed as self-defence, partially on Chloe’s own testimony. 

“Yes. But, more importantly,” Lucifer added, “The blade doesn’t just kill humans. It destroys anything it touches, down to the soul. Not even enough left to turn up downstairs. They’re just...gone.” He grimaced. “Raguel is the only other angel I know of who can do that, though his is built-in rather than in handy knife form.”

And that- That was important, that might be the key to this whole case, but Chloe was caught up in gone. It wasn’t- It shouldn’t have horrified her. It was what she had always believed happened to the dead. But now- It was almost worse to know that there was an afterlife, and know that some souls were destroyed anyway.

“What...why would anyone need-”

Lucifer shifted. “I don’t know. Azrael...her job isn’t to kill people. Just...collecting souls. She doesn’t _cause_ death. Or she didn’t, before everything. Raguel…” he sucked in a breath through his teeth. “He’s...an investigator. The first detective, you might say. And empowered to enact punishment once he’s found whoever he’s after.”

That was a horrifying thought on more levels than one - Chloe had joined the police force wanting to make it better, and the thought of some of her colleagues having that level of power in law was horrifying - but also-

“...wait. _Heaven_ needs detectives?”

“We didn’t,” Lucifer said flatly, avoiding her eyes. “Until we did.”

Well, _that_ was spectacularly unhelpful, and thus really should have been expected.

“The point is,” Lucifer went on, a bit more steadily. “That I have...a number of artefacts...that might be useful for someone like Raguel. But none of them are things he can or needs to _use_.”

Chloe forced herself to nod, to act like this was...just the workings of an investigation, not the nature of the universe laid out for her inspection.

“...what artefacts?” she asked. “You- You said you had Gabriel’s horn-”

“ _Yes_ ,” Lucifer agreed, almost a hiss. “And since my hellion is the only entity in the three spheres who can use the damn thing for its intended world-end-y purpose…”

“What does Gabriel use it for, then?”

“Mostly fanfares, what does it- It doesn’t matter! The point is, Raguel can’t end the world with it, and nor can anyone else except Sabrina, who happens to _like_ the world, if you’ll believe it.” He snorted. “She was willing to declare war on _me_ when she thought I wanted her to do it. That’s how I found her, actually, but- Point is, he’s got no use for that.”

“So, what else? The book?”

“Yes. And-” Lucifer froze. “Azrael’s blade,” he said in a low voice. “The flaming sword- Oh- Oh, no-”

“What-” Chloe forced herself to calm down. “Okay. Flaming sword. That’s...something to do with the Garden of Eden, isn’t it?”

“The first weapon used on Earth, yes.” Lucifer’s lips drew together. “Powerful enough to cut through the Gates of Heaven. If Raguel was cast out…”

“He wants to go back,” Chloe finished.

It sounded...so small, put like that, except that now two people were dead.

“He’s not the only one.”

It was the first time he’d said anything like that, and Chloe looked over at him in sudden, unaccountable alarm.

“Do you?”

A muscle worked in Lucifer’s jaw. 

“No,” he said. “No, that’s done with. There’s nothing left for me there.”

It was a shameful relief to hear it. Lucifer was- It was hard to picture Lucifer in heaven. He wasn’t...made for perfection. Which sounded awful, except that she didn’t mean he wasn’t good enough for it. Only that Lucifer, everything he was...went beyond that. Messy and sprawling and extravagant, with his temper and his self-absorption and his careless generosity and those unexpected flashings of kindness that startled her every time despite already knowing they were there. She’d like a heaven that would incorporate all those things, but neither Dante nor any other writer on the subject had ever given her reason to hope for one. Not that they’d know, but-

Well. Nothing in how Lucifer or Amenadiel talked about their home, in the rare fragments they let slip about it, suggested anything of the kind either.

The elevator doors slid open before she could formulate a reply, and Chloe stepped out into the ruin of Lucifer’s penthouse.

The place had been quite thoroughly ransacked...but not randomly. This hadn’t been destruction for its own sake. The racks of bottles behind the bar were quite untouched behind crime-scene tape, though every container within the bar itself lay open. The stained-glass panel of twining fruits and flowers that stood by the bar was broken now, and someone had taken a knife to the arms of the sofas. Lucifer’s books had all been thrown off their shelves too. Someone, in short, had been searching for something. They hadn’t found it in the safe, and so they’d scoured the rest of the apartment - even the ridiculous ornate cat-palace that had been installed with Salem and Sabrina’s arrival looked as if it had been ransacked.

Lucifer made straight for his bedroom. Someone had removed the hideous clown-mermaid painting from the wall, and slashed it open - presumably assuming that Lucifer wouldn’t keep the thing if there wasn’t _something_ of value concealed in it - and there was the safe. Ella was right. It _had_ been pried open.

“What was in the safe?” she asked, frowning.

Lucifer shrugged. “Nothing that would be of interest to Raguel. Or...to my mother, if she’s mixed up in this.”

“You thought she was last time,” Chloe reminded him. “And she wasn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t now.”

Chloe sighed. “Okay. Is this - any of this - within her abilities?”

“Not...physically,” Lucifer allowed. “She’s essentially…maybe not human, but definitely not what she was. But with me and Amenadiel both not talking to her...she always did talk a lot about the importance of family, and Raguel is her son too.”

“Let’s just wait on evidence.” Chloe looked at the safe and sighed. “I think we can safely say that there was something supernatural involved. Those are _definitely_ fingermarks.”

Just fingernails was understating the matter - the metal had buckled and warped under someone’s grip, and the gouges were, quite definitely, finger-shaped.

She glanced over at Lucifer. “Could you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Could Amenadiel?”  
“No.”

“So...whoever did this, they’re more powerful than Amenadiel, less so than you.” She paused. “How...I didn’t find anything about Amenadiel.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.” Lucifer was stooping over the safe to look inside. “Nothing taken.”

Chloe ground her teeth. “Why wouldn’t I? I scoured everything I could that even mentioned angels…”

“Well, it’s not as though the harp-and-halo crowd comes down here that much, is it?” Lucifer half-snapped. “And Amenadiel isn’t in any of the charts for obvious reasons. He doesn’t really fit into the rank systems you humans get so caught up in.”

He straightened up, and made for the carved Sumerian wall, gaping with the safe gouged out, running his fingers along the carvings.

“Didn’t find it, then,” he murmured, almost too soft for Chloe to make out the words.

“Didn’t find-” Chloe started, but before she could finish the sentence, Lucifer punched clean through the wall, and drew out-

It was, very definitely, the same knife from that rash of stabbings, the one that had mysteriously never turned up in evidence. Since everyone who could reasonably be charged with murder instead of manslaughter in self-defence was dead, Chloe hadn’t cared quite as much about that. She’d never seen the knife in person, but now-

It was a beautiful thing, and her fingers twitched, almost of their own accord, with the desire to grasp the handle.

Lucifer’s grin was all teeth, more a snarl than a smile. “Be careful, Detective. I told you what this thing does to the mind. Daniel couldn’t keep his hands off it either.”

“Okay,” Chloe said shakily. “So...they didn’t get the blade, then.”

“No.” Lucifer grimaced. “Though apparently it’s in three pieces, which sounds like the plot of a video game, but-”

“...okay. Where- Where are the other pieces?”

“Safe.” Lucifer was halfway across the room now, still searching. “...the Horn isn’t here.”

Chloe froze.

The Horn. Gabriel’s Horn. The one you couldn’t have an apocalypse without. Loose in the world. And if Azrael’s blade had caused any number of otherwise reasonable people to massacre their way through an entire yoga studio...what could this do, in the wrong hands?  
“Are-” _Are you sure_ , she bit off. Of course he was sure. “What- What happens if someone - someone human, I mean - gets hold of it?”

“Nothing.” Lucifer sounded honestly baffled. “It’s not like Azrael’s Blade. It _wants_ to be blown, to signal the start of the End Times, that’s what it’s _for_. But it’s not going to work for any human who picks it up.”

“What about any _angel_?”

Lucifer snorted. “Not even then. That’s why Baphomet needed-” he broke off, his face going white as chalk, his eyes staring. “...needed Sabrina…” he muttered, “Detective-”

“Where is she?” Chloe asked.

“At Linda’s. She was supposed to have a session today. Detective, if it’s either of them-”

“Go,” Chloe told him. “I’ll be right behind you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hate every word of this chapter, it is the worst thing I have ever written and I am only posting it because I am sick to the back teeth of working on it and every edit just makes it worse.  
> Also. Raguel. I cannot write him.  
> With that out of the way, onto the fic.

They got to Linda’s office building barely behind Lucifer, since Ella had no more respect for speed limits or no-parking zones than Lucifer did, and still arrived too late.

Ella had floored the accelerator all the way from Lux when Chloe had given her and Dan the story about yet another threat being made against Sabrina Spellman’s life, and Linda being caught in the crossfire. After the kidnapping, it wasn’t even a hard story to sell. Since Ella apparently had no more respect for speed limits and ‘stop’ signs than Lucifer did when the cause was good enough, and enough control over the car to get away with it, they’d arrived just in time to see the blinding light pouring from every window for one long moment before the whole building went up.

Lucifer didn’t even hesitate. Before Chloe’s eyes, he disappeared into the flames.

“Lucifer!” the word ripped out of her, almost physically painful. Lucifer, who burned like any other man, who might not be able to die, but _hurt_ like anyone else, literally walking through fire to reach his daughter, even though, Chloe knew, in a blaze like that, which had gone off like a firebomb, the chances were that Sabrina was- that Linda was- That anyone inside was already dead. She swallowed, tears stinging her eyes at the thought.

No. She couldn’t write them off yet. Sabrina- Sabrina _had magical powers and could control fire_ for go- for _somebody’s_ sake, Chloe couldn’t believe that this had really killed her. 

She turned to Dan. “Dan, call the fire department, we need them here as soon as possible.”

“Already done,” Dan replied, distracted. He was already keying in the number. “What the hell _happened_ in there?”  
“I don’t know.”

“Maybe-” Ella was staring up at the blaze, shell-shocked. “...do you- I think that might’ve been it. Our murder weapon. Oh, god, and Linda and Sabrina are both in there. We have to- What can we _do?_ ”

“Nothing we can do until the fire department gets here,” Dan said breathlessly. “Not like we can start a bucket chain or anything. Chloe, you _can’t_ be thinking of going in after him.”

“Why not?” Chloe demanded. “There’s more than just Sabrina and Linda in that building, Lucifer can’t drag them all out-”

“Chlo- If you go in there, you’re going to be dead in minutes. Probably so’s he. I’m-” Dan looked stricken, and his voice cracked. “I’m sorry. They’re gone.”

Chloe shook her head, mute with horror. She couldn’t believe that. Lucifer was the actual, literal Devil, Sabrina was the Antichrist and Linda...Linda had both of them protecting her. They couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t.

“We need- We should set up a perimeter,” she said instead, jerkily. “Whoever did this-”

“Probably didn’t hang around,” Ella warned. “Like...that thing went off inside the building. Probably a bomb or some other kind of incendiary device. Either the guy who set it cleared out of here hours ago, or it was a suicide bomber, in which case...he’s not making it out either.”

If they’d been dealing with a human criminal, Chloe would have agreed with her. But they weren’t. Whether this was Raguel or the Goddess...would they even get hurt? But they didn’t have the manpower to set up a perimeter. She dug out her phone. “I’m calling for backup. Whatever did this, we can’t be sure they didn’t hang around to watch.”

She had to trust that Lucifer would be okay, that he’d get the others out. She had to trust him, because the alternative - that he and Sabrina and Linda were all dead, that they’d died pointless deaths so Raguel or the Goddess or both could return to the Silver City that Lucifer never wanted to see again - was unbearable.

She called it in - fire at this address, suspected incendiary device, fire services have already been called, people inside, but no clear number, send backup and ambulances. She was running on muscle memory more than anything now, the thought of what might have happened hammering in her brain. Linda, her bones burnt bare, the way Chet’s had been, the way Patrick’s had been. Sabrina, gasping and coughing and choking on smoke. Lucifer, burning.

Something soft brushed against her leg, and Chloe looked down. Salem was there, winding against her ankles, his fur plastered to his skin, looking scrawny and bedraggled, but still recognisably himself. He hissed at her when he caught her looking, but he was _alive_.

“...what…” she muttered, staring down at the cat. 

Ella had noticed too. “Hey, is that…” she bent to scoop up Salem as he tried to run. “It’s Salem! What’s he doing here?”

“Sabrina brings him along to therapy with her,” Chloe supplied. She’d be surprised if the cat had left Sabrina’s side at all except that night he’d spent with her and Trixie, at Sabrina’s insistence.

She thought back to her witchcraft research. Familiar spirits. Demons in the shape of animals. Was Salem one? It would explain how _knowing_ he seemed, sometimes, far more than a cat should be. Or the way he seemed to respond almost effortlessly to Sabrina’s moods, and seemed more than once to be trying to act as a protector, little good though he seemed to be doing her in that capacity.

“He’s hurt,” Ella said, sounding worried. “I think- Yeah, these are definitely burns. He’s going to need a vet pretty soon…”

Chloe’s throat clenched. If a demon couldn’t escape the fire unscathed-

But then she saw the shadow moving in the flames, and her heart rose and caught in her throat.

Lucifer was coming out. Slowly, painfully, every step dragging, but _alive_.

He was half bent over, and as he emerged, Chloe could see- He’d found them. Both of them. Linda was over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, the smoking remains of Lucifer’s jacket wrapped around her head and shoulders. Sabrina was slumped on Lucifer’s back like a child Trixie’s age, her head resting against his shoulder.

Chloe’s heart twisted in desperate relief. She ran forward, heedless, to meet them.

As she drew closer, it became clear that Lucifer wasn’t quite as fine as he’d looked from a distance. His suit was singed and soot-stained, and his hands were burnt and blistered from the flames - she’d heard him laugh, once, about the irony that fire burnt him. He wasn’t laughing now.

Sabrina was stirring feebly against his shoulder, but Linda was terribly, terribly still, her dress bloodstained, where Chloe could see it beneath Lucifer’s coat, her breathing shallow.

“I called for backup,” Chloe said, awkward and dizzy with dread and relief both. “The ambulance should be here soon. How- How bad is it?”

“We don’t have time to wait for an ambulance.” Lucifer’s voice was hoarse, rasping. “I’ll take them.”

Chloe swallowed. “I’m coming with you. I- Whether it was Raguel or your mom that did this, they might try again. You might need backup.”

How much use she’d be against a Goddess and the Vengeance of God was another question entirely, but Chloe had let down Sabrina once before, when she’d come to her looking for...support, acceptance, understanding. She wasn’t going to do it again. Not when it was her life on the line.

Lucifer didn’t protest, but that might just have been because he didn’t want to waste the time, making directly for Chloe’s car. Of course, you couldn’t fit two people in the Corvette, which didn’t even have a back to it. 

“What happened?” Dan demanded. “Lucifer, are they-”

Lucifer ignored him.

“It’s bad,” Chloe said, “We’re taking them straight to hospital - Lucifer’s worried the ambulance might not make it in time. Dan, I’m so sorry, can you-”

“I’ll sort things with our backup,” Dan promised. “Just- Oh, god.”

Chloe looked around. As Lucifer laid Linda down on the back seat, the extent of the damage became clear. Linda’s face was...unrecognisable, and all the worse for the fact that she was still somehow clinging to life. The fire had taken her lips and her nose looked half-melted, her eyes... _she had no eyes_. Just pools of vitreous fluid, even the eyelids gone. Chloe could feel her gorge rising, could smell again that stench of sulphur and cooking meat, mixed in with the ozone taste of the air just before a storm.

“You can’t...Lucifer, I’m sorry, she won’t make it,” Dan swallowed. “Even if you get her to hospital, this...it’s too much damage. She’s dying.”

Lucifer snarled out something that might have been a sob or a fit of hysteric laughter, or possibly both at once.

“Thank you for your _brilliant_ medical input, Daniel, but I’d rather let the professional decide that.” Lucifer’s voice was ragged. He knew, Chloe realised. He knew, and he was doing this anyway.

“Isn’t there-” she started. “There must be something-”

“I...I don’t think so.” Ella’s voice was thick with tears. “She’s...I’ve only ever seen burns like this on corpses.”

“Most of the new people you _meet_ are corpses!” Lucifer snapped back. “The sooner we can get her to an actual human doctor, the sooner we’ll know, now- come _on!_ ”

He shifted Sabrina off his back and, since Linda was strapped in across the whole back seat of the car, set her down in the front, as carefully as he could. She lay there, half-curled, pale as death and bleeding from a long cut that ran beside her hairline, one arm flopping out, blackened but not burned, like a dead thing.

Chloe paused, and then clambered into the footwell beside Linda, glad that Sabrina was short enough that moving the seat up wouldn’t cause any more damage as Lucifer buckled her in.

It was fortunate that the speedometer was out of Chloe’s sight this time, because even here, in the back, doing her best to keep Linda still and as unjostled as could be managed, she could tell that Lucifer was breaking every traffic law on the books, and a few more that they’d probably have to come up with after this stunt.

Even so, the ride seemed to take hours, Lucifer snarling imprecations in the same guttural, unfamiliar language she’d heard him speak a few times before - the language of Heaven, she wondered? Or would it be Hell? Linda, so still that Chloe was terrified more than once that she’d died already, before her chest started moving again, in and out, her breaths coming slow and laboured.

She didn’t know what any doctor would be able to do for this. Dan was right, this was…was more than any human could hope to deal with, but-

But Sabrina was a witch, and Lucifer was the Devil, and Amenadiel was an angel. There was _magic_ in the world, strange as that was to think of. If anything could save Linda, it would be that. 

If the car ride had seemed to last forever, actually reaching the hospital was a blur. Stretchers, doctors, questions, Chloe had to flash her badge a handful of times to establish that this was police business, and that yes, they suspected Linda had been the victim of an assault. No, they had yet to catch her assailant, no, they had no idea what weapon had been used. Yes, it could well have been a blowtorch, she supposed. She could not have told you half of the questions that were asked, as soon as she had answered them, could not have picked out a single face from the crowd of doctors wheeling Linda and Sabrina away on stretchers, or the administrators staying to ask questions about medical insurance or whether there was an active investigation or who knew what else? One of the nurses was ushering Lucifer away, saying something about treatment for his burns-

“Wait!” she called out. “Let me- I need to-” 

She was babbling, she could hear it in her voice, but the thought of being alone right now was more than anyone could be asked to bear.

The nurse, an older woman in a dark hijab, fixed Chloe with a very dark look. “Are you family?”

“I’m…” Chloe swallowed. “I’m his partner. Please.”

A pause, and then the woman nodded. “Follow me.”

Chloe fell into step with Lucifer, not far behind the nurse, finally able to focus on the burns on Lucifer’s hands - second-degree, she thought, though she couldn’t be sure, red-raw and undoubtedly agonising, but Lucifer’s face was...not impassive, but for all the grief and exhaustion and rage writ plain across it, there wasn’t a hint of pain.

“Are you…” she started.

“ _I’m_ not the one you need to worry about, Detective,” Lucifer gritted out, low and harsh and furious.

“Yeah, well, lucky for you I can worry about more than one person at a time.”

She was trying not to think about Linda, and the likelihood that, within a few days, the world would be that little bit dimmer and sharper around the edges. A world without Linda Martin in it would be a very bleak place indeed. Chloe didn’t want to live in that world, at least not anytime soon.

She tried not to think about the fact that, very soon, she might have to.

Lucifer, meanwhile, was attempting, without success, to convince the nurse that his burns were _fine_ , really, and he’d be quite well as long as he could see his daughter.

“Mr Morningstar, unless you _want_ to never be able to use your hands again, you _aren’t_ fine,” the nurse was insisting. “Your daughter is getting the best treatment possible-”

“I’ll believe that when I see her,” Lucifer sniped back. “Detective-”

“She’s right, Lucifer,” Chloe said. “I know you’re not-” used to mortality, she cut off. “A fan of doctors, but it’ll be over a lot faster if you don’t struggle.”

Lucifer glared at her.

The nurse raised her eyebrows. “Your husband calls you ‘Detective’?”’

“We’re not-” Lucifer started, rather peevishly.

“Uh- In-joke,” Chloe cut him off. Irritating as the misunderstanding was - and it _was_ irritating, far more than it should have been, catching under her skin and lodging there - it was all that let her stay here and she couldn’t- she couldn’t face the thought of being out there alone, with Linda dying just a few rooms away, and nothing she could do to help or stop it or maybe even get justice for what had happened to her. “Can- Do you know when we’ll be able to see them?”

The nurse’s lips tightened. “Not yet,” she said tightly and then, maybe taking pity on them. “Your daughter...shouldn’t need intensive care, although the injury to her arm was...severe. I...don’t want to alarm you, but she may need a great deal of physical and occupational therapy before she can use it again.”

“And Linda?” Chloe asked, heart in her throat, knowing the answer already but unable to stop herself from asking.

“Doctor Martin is still in the ICU.”

It was...good news, or as near as they could get to it, Chloe supposed. In the ICU meant there might still be a chance. If she was going to die, no matter what anyone did, would they have taken her there?

She clung onto that hope as Lucifer’s burns were cleaned and dressed, so that his arms from just above the elbow to his fingertips were swathed in so much gauze that he looked like an Egyptian mummy in evening gloves. She clung onto it all the tighter when they were released, and Lucifer, through his usual mix of charm, manipulation and blatant bribery, managed to secure them a private waiting room in another wing of the hospital.

Chloe still wasn’t sure how he’d managed that, and honestly didn’t much care. There would be time to worry about the ethics of it, and the medical bills...Lucifer could more than afford it, for Sabrina, and Linda...Chloe wanted to remain optimistic, but something gnawing in the pit of her gut told her that the odds were that Linda, soon, would be where medical bills no longer mattered.

She could see Linda’s face, now, every time she closed her eyes, smell the smoke on Lucifer’s clothes and her mind too easily supplemented it with the stench of ozone and sulphur. Her nails bit into the meat of her palms, and she nearly collapsed into a chair once they were alone, watching Lucifer pace with dull, unseeing eyes.

This wasn’t-

This whole case, everything to do with it, was so far above her pay-grade.

She knew what to do with murderers, or she’d always thought she did. Goddesses? Angels? Archangels? Those things...had no place, no relevance in her life. Or so she’d thought, anyway. Even after the church, after coming to her senses about Lucifer, she’d never imagined that she might come up against a case like this, where nothing had any rational explanation, and the bodies that turned up would be people she knew and liked, not the strangers her job normally brought her.

Lucifer’s phone rang, shockingly loud in the quiet of the waiting room, and he plucked it out of his pocket with a snarl.

“Yes?” There was a long pause. “...you’ve found him. Where did you find him? What? Really? That’s...unexpected. Looked like he’d been in a fight, did he? I see. No. No. I don’t want him there. We’re at-” he rattled off the name of the hospital. “Bring him here.”

Chloe straightened, exhaustion finally giving way to alarm.

“Lucifer, what-”

“They’ve found our stray archangel,” Lucifer said in a low voice, his eyes fixing on her. “I need to see him. _Yes_ , Maze, the hospital. Why-” he froze. “...oh. No. It’s...either Raguel or Mum went after Sabrina while she was at her session. The hellspawn looks as though...well, as if she’s just been through a fight with an archangel, and Doctor Linda got caught in the crossfire. She’s...I don’t know, but it’s _bad_ , Maze, and the sooner I have Raguel in front of me, the sooner we can get punishment for what they did, so _please_. Hurry.”

His voice cracked on the ‘please’. Lucifer didn’t beg, but he was as close now as he had ever come to it, and that was almost the most frightening thing of all.

Chloe swallowed as Lucifer lowered the phone. Apparently Maze had hung up on him.

“...are you sure that’s a good idea? Bringing him here, I mean. I don’t...what if we’re just giving him another shot.”

“With me, Maze and Amenadiel all there?” Lucifer’s lips drew back from his teeth. “I’d like to see him try it.”

“You can’t...you can’t fight him in a _hospital_ , Lucifer. Linda and Sabrina have already been in this guy’s crosshairs once, you want to make it a second time?”

“I’m not planning on _fighting_ him, Detective.”

“You can’t kill him in one either!”

Chloe...didn’t even know what she thought of that. If Raguel was an angel, was capable of murdering anyone in his path and no human prison could hold him, maybe that was the only way, but- But it would still be murder.

If it wasn’t murder, that meant that what the Order of the Innocents had planned hadn’t been murder either, and she couldn’t stick that idea at any price.

Lucifer’s eyes had gone dark. “Then we’ll take him elsewhere. _After_. I need to see her.”

He could have been talking about either of them. Chloe didn’t ask which, and wasn’t even sure he knew.

She thought about telling Trixie about what had happened, that Sabrina had got hurt again, even worse, because terrible as what happened at the church had been, she had at least taken no permanent damage from it - not physically, anyway. Of telling her that Linda, whom Trix had just been starting to open up to in their sessions, was dead or so badly hurt that the odds of her being able to live a normal life again anytime soon were next to none. It left a burning, sour taste in the back of her throat.

Linda-

Linda should never have been caught up in this, she’d done _nothing_ wrong. All she’d done was run into Chloe and Lucifer during the Delilah investigation, and have Lucifer decide, on a whim, it had felt like, that he might actually need some therapy.

He hadn’t been wrong, but-

If Delilah had gone to some other therapist, or if Linda had run the other way the moment the Devil had entered her life…

No. She wasn’t going to think that way. That was- It wasn’t Linda’s fault, and it wasn’t Lucifer’s or Sabrina’s either. That way of thinking never led to anything good.

She stared at the wall, and tried not to think of Linda’s face, rendered unrecognisable by divine fire, or the blackened ruin of Sabrina’s arm, until another nurse put his head around the door to inform them that their daughter was awake and asking for them. Well, Chloe thought, asking for Lucifer. Sabrina had no reason to want to see Chloe ever again. But Chloe owed her an apology, so she followed Lucifer anyway, out of the waiting room and into yet another private room - Chloe was starting to suspect a very sizeable donation to the hospital had been made while she wasn’t paying attention - and there Sabrina was.

She looked...under any other circumstances, Chloe would have said ‘terrible’, but now...after Linda, it was a terrible relief to know that _someone_ had made it out of that building who might survive. She was still almost pale enough to fade into the white sheets of her hospital bed, except for the ring of dark bruises around her throat, an IV pumping dark blood into her good arm, the bad arm hidden under the sheets. Her eyes were open, but still slightly hazy as they landed, first on Lucifer, and then on Chloe.

“Dad?” she managed, half-slurring the word. “Dad- I’m sorry, I couldn’t-”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Lucifer brushed a gentle hand over her fair hair, his voice barely more than a rasp. “Who did it?”

“Who else? Her. The- the Goddess.” Sabrina managed a shaky, hollow smile. “I fought, but Linda-”

“We know about Linda,” Chloe put in quickly. “She’s here. She’s in intensive care right now, but…” But what? She’ll pull through? They didn’t know that, and even if she did...Chloe couldn’t imagine what the lasting effects would be of that degree of damage. She almost didn’t want to know.

“She’s alive?” Sabrina’s voice was thin and raw and terribly hopeful.

Lucifer cast a look over at Chloe that was almost pleading. Chloe returned it, and saw some of the light go out of Sabrina’s eyes.

“...she _is_ alive, right?”

“She’s...alive,” Lucifer offered bleakly. He did not say ‘we do not know for how long’, but Chloe heard it, hanging in the air, all the same. So, by the look on her face, did Sabrina.

“Oh.”

She looked, all at once, very small. Just a skinny girl of sixteen, beaten and burnt and put through more than anyone should ever have asked of her.

Sabrina’s thoat worked through a swallow.

“And...and Salem. Is he...I can’t feel...I thought I’d feel it if he-”

“He’s fine,” Chloe said quickly. “Ella...Ella found him outside Linda’s building. He’s...he’s got a few minor burns, but he should be all right once he’s seen a vet, but she won’t be able to bring him in here.”

“She’s right,” Lucifer put in quickly, catching Sabrina’s eye. “Your awful little beast is alive and...if not well, at least less injured than _you_ are.”

Sabrina snorted. “Hey. I just got into a fight with a _goddess_. I think I’m doing pretty well here.” Her grin, already faint, faded. “And...and Linda. She was-” she swallowed. “I mean. She- She hit the Goddess from behind, near the end of our fight. That’s how...how the fire started. I remember…” she swallowed. Her eyes widened. “My arm. I can’t...I can’t move it. What-” She tried to sit up,and Lucifer was already moving to ease her back.

“You _did_ get into a fight with a Goddess,” he reminded her. “And won, since you’re still alive.”

“The doctors say you might be able to regain some function in it,” Chloe supplied awkwardly, painfully aware of the apology she hadn’t made, and which this wasn’t the time for. Sabrina had enough on her plate without Chloe adding her guilt to the pile. “It’s going to take time, and probably a lot of PT, but…” she trailed off, not quite sure what to say.

The last time she’d seen Sabrina, she’d accused the girl of murder on such scant evidence that Chloe would have been ashamed to bring it before a judge to ask for a warrant. Worse, she’d dredged up all the trauma of what had happened with Baphomet, and even if she hadn’t known then just how awful the events that had brought Sabrina to LA had been, she should’ve _asked_.

She’d known Sabrina for months now, let her babysit Trixie, had taken her along for Tribe Nights and listened to her worries. She should’ve remembered the girl she knew, and not just the Antichrist of Reese Getty’s paranoid fears. But she hadn’t, and she’d been too busy being afraid of something that might never happen, if not for her intervention, to stop and consider the facts she knew for sure. She needed to apologise. Sabrina was owed an apology. But asking her to accept one, now, seemed like only compounding the cruelty.

“... _might_ ,” Sabrina said, staring down at where her right arm lay, buried under sheets.

Lucifer’s eyes were dark and wild and, for the first time since Chloe had known him, helpless.

“That’s only mortal medicine,” he said quickly. “Your Aunt Hilda must have more idea-”

“How many Goddess-inflicted injuries do you see to develop a cure for them?” Sabrina demanded.

“A lot more than anyone used to,” Lucifer retorted, dry. His hand had returned to Sabrina’s hair, apparently of its own accord, his thumb smoothing the crease between her eyebrows. “Besides. Hilda was ready to fight _me_ to protect you, even when she thought I was at full strength. You try stopping her from helping you now.”

“I shouldn’t _need_ helped,” Sabrina muttered, sounding almost sulky. “I was...I didn’t think she had any power.”

“Nor did I.” Lucifer’s voice was grim. “Apparently she’s regaining them. Well, that’s one problem solved, anyway. If her powers are returning to this degree, she might take care of herself without us having to raise a finger.”

There was something sharp and painful in that phrase, something that didn’t bode well, and Chloe looked around.

“Take care of herself how?” she asked.

Lucifer’s mouth was a bloodless gash in his face, his eyes two deep pits, not burning, but terrible in their emptiness.

“If her powers are returning to this degree, Charlotte Richards’ body won’t be able to contain them,” he said flatly, and now Chloe knew the tone, on that harsh line between amusement and bitterness that was only an inch from a scream. He’d sounded like that when they’d come to arrest him for Malcolm Graham’s murders, goading them to shoot.

“So...what, she’ll have to find a new host?”

“Not an option.” Lucifer’s mouth twisted. “If it’s too much for that body, it’ll be too much for any other human form too. She’ll- She’ll burst.”

He didn’t say it like a man anticipating an end to all his problems. He said it...well, like a man contemplating the imminent death of his own mother, no matter what she’d done. But-

“When you say ‘burst’...” Chloe said slowly. “How...what’s going to happen to the people around her?”

Sabrina’s eyes went wide. “The- The light, is that- Dad, what if she- I mean, it’s not like she’d have a _problem_ with killing half of LA even if she wasn’t about to die-”

“...we need to find her,” Chloe said. And then- And then what? Treat it like an unexploded bomb, get her as far away from people as she possibly could- But then how were they supposed to make sure a _Goddess_ stayed in one place? A bomb could be buried or defused, but what were you supposed to do with a living person who might explode into killing light at any moment?

“I can help,” Sabrina said quickly, half-pushing herself up on her good arm.

“ _Patience_ , hellspawn,” Lucifer said, which was pretty rich coming from him, “Your aunts are going to want to flay me alive already without you trying for a rematch.”

“Dad, people are going to _die-_ ”

“And you could be one of them!” Lucifer snapped back. “It’s not...not everything is your responsibility to fix.”

“But if I hadn’t-”

“If you hadn’t fought her, she’d have killed you. You _do_ need to defend yourself, hellion, no matter how disgustingly selfless you can be sometimes.” Lucifer gave a hollow sort of grin. “You definitely didn’t get that from my side of the family. Or Edward’s, for that matter.”

Sabrina glared at him. “I don’t see why I had to get it from _anyone’s_ side of the family.”

“Parental prerogative,” Lucifer shot back. “It was that or blowing up partners I don’t approve of-”

“Or drowning the grandchildren, I suppose?” Sabrina laughed, and made an awful little pained sound at having laughed. “I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly. “Please don’t blow up Harvey. _Or_ Nick,” she added, a bit more grudgingly. “And you’re- You’re trying to distract me. Dad, _please-_ ”

There was the sound of feet and wheels outside, and Sabrina broke off as the door was opened, and another bed wheeled in. Lucifer’s influence once again, Chloe thought. Either that donation had been truly staggering, or Reese Getty might have actually been onto something with the mind control theory.

It was hard to say whether Linda looked better or worse. The burns had been, by the look of them, pretty thoroughly cleaned and the worst of the dead and blackened tissue cut away, but other than a strip over the eyes she hadn’t been bandaged, and a morphine drip and a heart monitor were the only other form of medical equipment being set up around her. Chloe’s heart felt like a stone, lodged in her chest, heavy and cold and unnatural. There was only one explanation for that that Chloe could think of. Intensive care had done what they could, and this was the limit of it, and now all that was left to do was make her comfortable, or as comfortable as they could manage, before the end.

Sabrina’s face was ashen where she was once again trying to lever herself up from the bed, and Lucifer looked as grim as Chloe had ever seen him. Had this been what he’d looked like, when it had been her in the hospital bed?

Except, then, Lucifer had somehow managed to pull a solution out of the hat almost at the last moment, and she’d made a full recovery in a matter of weeks. Now...now, Lucifer was sitting there on Sabrina’s other side, and if he’d had a solution to offer, wouldn’t he have mentioned it by now?

Whatever he’d done to get that formula - and the whole precinct had been at a loss for that - there wouldn’t be a repeat. Not this time. She watched the nurses filing out as if from a very great distance. It had not touched her yet.

“Is she…” Sabrina’s voice was small. “No- She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

Chloe swallowed.

“...yes,” she admitted, and then, quickly. “It’s not your fault. You should never have been put in that situation, I’m amazed that you got out alive-”

It didn’t help. Sabrina looked nearly sick with guilt and worry and misery, so pale that she seemed almost in danger of disappearing entirely into the hospital bed, except for those great, stricken dark eyes, the one feature of her father’s that Lucifer had passed on.

“She was after me. If I hadn’t been there-”

“Then she’d have slaughtered her way through anyone _else_ who happened to be around!” Lucifer snapped. “I told you. You’re guilty of what _you_ do, not what other people and cosmic entities do in fear of you.”

Sabrina barely even seemed to notice, her breaths coming short and fast with panic. “If I’d been at home, or- Or if I’d- First Trixie and now Linda, I’m- I’m _poison_ -”

“You’re quite painfully sixteen, at any rate,” Lucifer said irritably. “ _Before_ you start planning to become a hermit so that nobody will be caught in the crossfire next time someone tries to kill you, hellspawn, maybe consider that Linda wouldn’t have put herself between you and your grandmother if she hadn’t thought it was worth doing.”

“But if I hadn’t…” Sabrina swallowed. “If I’d just gone with her…Linda could’ve called you, or- or I could’ve done something once we were far enough away…”

“Hey,” Chloe interrupted, “It’s easy to think about what you should have done after it’s over. You were being threatened by someone you knew wanted you dead. There isn’t a rulebook for that. You did what seemed best at the time. And it’s not as though your grandmother has a problem with collateral damage or killing innocent bystanders anyway.”

Sabrina still didn’t know, she realised. She’d still been in her session with Linda when the break-in at Lux had happened. Had she known Patrick? She’d got on terms with the rest of the staff at Lux quick enough, to the point where half the bartenders either looked the other way when she ordered alcohol or were willing to experiment with making mocktails bitter enough to satisfy Sabrina’s taste for wormwood. Had Patrick been one of them?

She couldn’t ask, and she couldn’t tell her. Not now, not like this. Sabrina would have time enough to learn the worst. There would be a time to tell her about Patrick, when Sabrina wasn’t lying there pale as death with the IV still in and Linda wasn’t dying on the other side of the room. A time when an apology wouldn’t be just another weight, and Sabrina didn’t look fit to break from an unkind word when the literal wrath of God - well, Godd _ess_ \- hadn’t shattered her.

Sabrina was still staring across the room, sitting up against her pillows.

“I-” she shifted, and swore under her breath as the IV came out. “I can heal her. I’ve done it before-”

“ _Yes_ , hopped up on apocalypse-juice and after getting murdered by nephilim-” Lucifer started.

Sabrina’s eyes flashed dangerously, glinting red for a moment the way Lucifer’s sometimes did - not _seemed to_ , Chloe realised with another dizzying swoop in the stomach, _did_ \- “I’ve got to _try_ ! You’d do the exact same if you could- You _did_ the exact same when it was Chloe!”

“And nearly got myself killed doing it! And that was with Maze and Linda and Amenadiel all pitching in to help. You’re tapped out already, and I can’t help you. I can’t-” Lucifer’s voice cracked. “I can’t lose you too.”

“You won’t have to lose _either_ of us if I do this right-”

“Because your _last_ attempt at meddling with the boundaries between life and death worked out so well,” Lucifer snapped, and then froze, a look of abject horror flashing across his face. “I didn’t mean that,” he said quickly. “Of course it wasn’t-”

“Wasn’t what?” Sabrina demanded. “I _know_ I screwed up with Tommy, but-”

“And whose life were you planning to use to power the spell? Some innocent bystander off the street-?”

“No, of course not! This was my fault, I should- Nobody else should have to pay for it-” Sabrina managed a shaky smile. “I mean...odds are I’ll end up downstairs anyway-”

“ _Don’t_ .” Lucifer’s voice was raw. “You aren’t going to Hell. Not if I have to _drag_ you out-”

“ _Now_ who’s meddling with the balance between life and death-!”

“Okay!” Chloe interrupted, almost a yell. “Okay. I do not have a clue about how this works, but I am pretty sure that you were just talking about _killing yourself_ to bring Linda back, and that is _not-_ that’s not an option. Not now, not ever, and if Linda was awake, she’d agree with me!”

Sabrina bristled. “That’s not your decision to make! Now let me _up!_ ”

She was already levering herself up on one elbow, swinging her legs off the bed for all that Chloe was quite sure they’d give out under her the moment she tried to take a step, shaking off Lucifer’s hand on her shoulder as if it were nothing.

“Sabrina-”

“I’m not…” Sabrina swallowed, reaching up a hand to touch the shoulder of her blackened, useless arm. Had she even realised, before, how extensive the damage was? “It’s not going to be like it was with Tommy. I- She’s still alive, right? The price hasn’t been paid-”

The dim beeping of the heart monitor was confirmation enough of _that_ , in a room fallen suddenly silent to listen.

“...she’s alive,” Lucifer allowed. “And you’re still- I mean...I know _I_ call them the cheat codes to the universe, but there are still _some_ rules. A healing this major will take a lot out of you, and I’m not sure there’s that much left to take.”

It was such a _gamerly_ way to put it that Chloe could almost have laughed. It felt absurd, suddenly, all of them gathered around here arguing over what might be the only hope they had of saving Linda’s life, when she’d already been terrified of some kind of awful deal, a life for a life, trading Sabrina’s life for Linda’s, and the devastation that would cause. She couldn’t believe that Linda would want to be saved in such a way. She couldn’t imagine letting Sabrina go through with it. Lucifer, at least, seemed to agree with her that far, even as he reached out to steady Sabrina as she rose shakily to her feet.

“I have to try.” Sabrina’s face was drawn, pale, determined. “What, are you going to tie me down to stop me?”

Lucifer’s face did something that was not quite a spasm, pain and frustration and grief and something that was almost like pride all at once.

“If I have to.”

Sabrina half-slumped against him. It had apparently taken most of her strength to get upright, and Chloe’s eyes fell again to the IV needle, lying useless on the bed. Someone really ought to have come by now-

And if they did, what would they tell them? Lucifer’s money and quite-literally-supernatural charm might smooth some of the way, but not all of it, and Sabrina was only human, or close enough to it. Enough to attract no shortage of fuss and bother, in the room where Linda was dying, and they’d all been so caught up in their argument that they’d hardly even glanced at her.

Even now, Chloe’s eyes skittered away from the ruin of Linda’s face, as if her gaze had a physical weight that might somehow make things worse, even now when the doctors had given up hope. It didn’t look like her face anymore. It was impossible to look, and to think that that was Linda, lying as still as death and more than halfway there.

Lucifer was trying to guide Sabrina back towards her own cot without it looking like that was what he was doing, with the air of the world’s most confused sheepdog confronting a goat for the first time. Sabrina...didn’t appear to be physically resisting, but somehow she found her way across the room to perch on the edge of Linda’s bed in spite of it.

She paused.

“I don’t…” she swallowed. “I mean...I’ve only done this, before, after what happened at the Desecrated Church. It was easy then. I didn’t even have to _think_ about it-”

“Because it wasn’t _you_ paying the price.” Lucifer’s voice dragged and rasped. “It was Hell. You couldn’t touch it, after what happened at Greendale-”

“But then I could.” Sabrina’s jaw was set. She looked, of a sudden, very much like her father. “After- When the Order of the Innocents had me. I _saw_ Hell. It- It _wanted_ me-”

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“-if I could do it then, I can do it now. I can _heal_ her, Dad. I just...need to figure out _how_.”

Chloe swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

“What...what exactly are you suggesting you do?” she asked. “You...okay. You can _bring people back from the dead_?”

If that was it, no wonder Chloe hadn’t found the details of the massacre Sabrina had hinted at. If Sabrina had brought them all back...except-

“Not...not normally.” Sabrina’s eyes flicked down. “But- I’ve done it before. I can do it again.”

“It isn’t going to work just because you want it to.” Lucifer was tense as a piano-wire and white as a sheet. “If the power was going to come at all, it would’ve weeks ago. And since nobody here is going to cut your throat just on the off-chance you’ll come back with phenomenal cosmic powers-”

“What do you suggest we should do, then?” Sabrina blazed back. “ _I’m_ not going to just sit here and watch her die when I can do something to stop it-”

“So you’ll throw your own life away? Hellspawn- _Sabrina_ . That’s not...that’s not any _better_.”

“It’s not _going_ to kill me! I _told_ you, I’ve done this before, and- And when did you become the cautious one, anyway? Don’t you _want-_ ”

“ _Don’t_ . Finish that sentence. Of _course_ I do. But-” Lucifer set his jaw. “If the good doctor is going anywhere, it isn’t Hell. We’ll never see her again, but it’s not- Eternal torment isn’t something she’ll ever have to worry about. Even if this works-”

“It’s _going_ to!” Sabrina snapped, and reached over to lay a hand on Linda’s forehead, her face screwed up in concentration. “I just...need to find it again. And I can’t _do_ that with you distracting me!”

“What will happen?” Chloe asked, looking around at Lucifer. “Lucifer, _please_ -”

“Hell already has a claim on her.” Lucifer looked stricken, pained. “That was part of Baphomet’s plan. Hellish miracles, a parody of one of Upstairs’s pet projects, bringing the spheres together. Amenadiel is, I hate to say it, right. This world wasn’t meant for that sort of power-”

“It’s _one_ spell!” Sabrina snapped. “I- I don’t know if it’s even a spell-”

“It isn’t! That’s the _problem_!” Lucifer reached out to catch Sabrina gently by the upper arm, to hold her back, Chloe thought, but no sooner had his fingers brushed the skin of her arm than he was sent reeling back, stumbling and falling backwards.

Sabrina’s face twisted. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick and choked with tears and desperation. “But I can’t- I can’t let you stop me. Not when this is all my fault.”

“Hellspawn-”

Sabrina was muttering to herself now, quick and feverish in a language Chloe only half-recognised. Latin, maybe, something ritualistic and sharp-edged and heavy with the weight of tradition.

The hairs went up on the back of her neck.

It didn’t feel like that day at the church, like the world had been torn open and she could see, all at once, into something she should not have seen.

It was furtive, and terrible, and terribly human all at once, almost familiar, and Chloe couldn’t help the thought that if she’d seen magic this way first, she might well have explained it away with all the rest. Maybe she had.

“Hey-” Chloe tried to close the distance, but something- Something had caught her foot. It sent her sprawling, and as she looked back, she could see the floor of the hospital itself, could _feel_ linoleum curling and twisting up to mummify her leg almost to the knee, holding her down and in place where she lay.

More powerful than Lucifer, now, he’d said. She hadn’t quite believed it, before. She had no trouble believing it now. Sabrina was half-hunched over the body, trembling all over with the force of it, though whether that was the healing or binding them back that was taking that much out of her, Chloe didn’t know and couldn’t guess.

“Ad mutare fata, consilio...c-consilio...quid est…” Sabrina’s voice faltered. She was breathing hard now, so pale she was almost grey. 

“That’s enough,” Chloe interrupted, not knowing whether it was before Lucifer could or because he _couldn’t_ \- She couldn’t see him, from where she was caught, she didn’t know what Sabrina might have used to bind him. “Sabrina, you’re shaking. You can stop. It’s-” She had meant to say ‘all right’, but the words stuck in her throat. It wasn’t all right. But- Maybe one day it would be. It had felt like the end of the world when her dad died, but life had gone on without John Decker in it, and if she sometimes wondered what her life would even look like without that shock...she was past longing for it. They would get better, if they were given a chance.

“No. I can do this.” Sabrina swallowed. “Quid est nisi amissa, redde- Redde-”

“Hellspawn-” The words sounded like they’d been ripped from Lucifer’s throat, somewhere behind her, grief and guilt and fury all at once.

The heart monitor stuttered, beeping frantically, and Chloe felt her own heart racing to match it. Linda- Linda. Linda, who might be as good as dead already if not for this. Could Chloe really look at herself in the mirror, knowing they’d had a chance to save her, and let it go by? Could she, if this failed, and she knew she’d risked the life of her best friend’s daughter to get Linda back? Or even if it succeeded. Lucifer always acted like the risks didn’t matter so long as they paid off. Chloe couldn’t.

The heart monitor bleeped again, and stuttered out.

The room was still.

For a moment, Chloe couldn’t grasp it. Even standing here in the same room, it didn’t make any more sense. She’d talked to Linda, just last night. She’d wanted Chloe to set an appointment. It hardly seemed possible that she should be dead.

She stared up blindly at the bed, feeling the weight slither off her leg, almost as if it were a living thing, embarrassed to have caught her. Shakily, she pushed herself upright, her leg aching under her with the sudden lack of constriction.

Chloe had seen so many dead bodies now that she could hardly remember them all. Most of them strangers, some not. She’d hardly recognised Chet Ruiz’s corpse. She didn’t recognise Linda, now. It was just another body, anonymous in death, and Linda- Some part of her brain still insisted that Linda should be out there, somewhere, in the world, seeing patients or worrying about where she was going to see them now her building was a burnt-out shell of itself.

That was not Linda Martin, lying there, with Sabrina miserably half-curled on the cot beside her. It was not Linda’s hand that Chloe took, to find it still warm, and felt for a pulse that was not there.

“ _Dad-_ ” Sabrina rasped out. “Dad, I’m _sorry_ -”

“Sabrina.”

Lucifer was pale and ashen, somehow crumpled, smaller than himself, and Chloe could see now the blood soaking through his white shirt, where he’d fought against his own bindings - at the elbows, at the wrists, and not the leg, but just as fast as the ones that had held her.

One minute, he was all the way across the room, the next he was sinking to sit beside Sabrina, folding her close against his shoulder as she shook with silent sobs, her fair hair against his cheek, and Chloe could feel the wetness on her own face. She registered it distantly, like an action in a dream.

It would be real soon enough, she knew. Not straight away, when the whole subject of the end of a human life was reduced down to paperwork and funeral arrangements and the mundane bureaucracy of death. But after that...that was when it became unbearable. 

She wanted, more than anything, to break down crying herself, just for some relief from this awful unreal feeling, but the tears wouldn’t come. She could hear Sabrina’s snuffling sobs and half-choked apologies, but it was as if they were coming from a long way off- Until, all at once, they weren’t.

The room was still as Sabrina pulled away from her father, her eyes still closed, her pale face suffused with an odd, unwholesome sort of light, and coldness shot through Chloe’s veins like plunging into deep water, with no idea how far down the bottom might be.

“Sabrina?” Lucifer rasped out, reaching for her arm, but Sabrina shook him off as if he was not there, moving like a sleepwalker, slow and deliberate, as she reached out to lay a hand on Linda’s still chest, the fingers splaying out as Sabrina’s eyes snapped open, shining white from edge to edge, and Chloe’s half-voiced cry of protest died in her throat.

She had almost begun to think that it could not have been so very terrible, what she saw in the church. Or- Not Sabrina’s part in it. The stench of sulphur and the awful smell and taste of cooking meat in the air, the men and women burning alive around her, so thoroughly that even dental records could be no help - there was no excusing that, but Sabrina herself, hanging over it all, serene and untouched amidst all the blood and horror of the scene, her white hair blown in an unseen wind- Surely, she had thought, she had exaggerated the horror of that.

Not so.

The world had been torn open, and something else was shining through. No wind, this time, no screaming. Only the terrible silence of a stillborn thing, and, in that silence, the light.

That light- Chloe was staring now, she realised, but could not make herself stop, falling into the light, caught by it.

And then, all at once, it was gone, and Sabrina went slumping back as Linda’s chest rose and fell, smooth skin washing over what had been open burns.

Chloe was close enough to hear the words, half-slurred and unrecognisable from Sabrina’s mouth, a language she didn’t know. Not the Latin she’d used before, but something else, a guttural language that left an odd tingling in Chloe’s ears at the sound of it.

“...ol trian noan lonsa vors a malprg od a caos olg-”

What little blood there was left drained from Lucifer’s face, his lips drawing back from the teeth in an awful rictus, as if his life had been offered up in place of Linda’s.

“What did she say?” Chloe demanded. “It- How bad is it? Lucifer-”

“She said ‘mine shall be dominion over the Fire and the Earth’,” a new voice cut in, and Chloe looked around, startled, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, the rictus grin on Lucifer’s face twist again into a snarl.

“Raguel.”

“Samael.” The newcomer gave what was either an unnecessarily deep nod or possibly a shallow bow. “I’d apologise for bursting in uninvited, but looks like I got here just in time.”

Chloe didn’t know what she’d expected when she’d heard the words ‘Archangel of Justice’ or ‘Vengeance of God’, but Raguel wasn’t it. 

She’d expected someone...taller was a cliche, but also true. _Colder_ too, she supposed. If she’d been asked to give a description of what Raguel might look like, she might have pictured something a bit more in the Sherlock Holmes line.

Instead, Raguel was a few inches shorter than Lucifer. He did not look exactly _old_ , despite his iron-grey hair, although Chloe wouldn’t have wanted to venture a guess at how old he was beyond ‘middle-aged’, if she hadn’t already known that the real answer was ‘older than time’. He looked, she realised suddenly, a little - a very little - like Lucifer. The same curve to both their noses, the same dark eyes. Lucifer wouldn’t have been caught dead in Raguel’s shabby trench coat and ill-fitting suit, like an alcoholic PI in an old noir movie, but the resemblance was there nonetheless.

Lucifer’s eyes were wild. “You’re not coming anywhere near her,” he growled. “I don’t care what Father’s purpose for you was, Sabrina isn’t yours to punish-”

“You know what she is, Samael.”

“ _Don’t call me that!_ ”

“Linda!” 

It was Maze’s voice, and Chloe startled. She’d been so caught up in the shock of Raguel’s appearance - their quarry, or so they’d thought - that she hadn’t seen Amenadiel and Maze behind him, even now as Maze elbowed her way past Raguel to half-throw herself down at Linda’s side, nearly frantic as she reached for Linda’s wrist. Something in her face slackened with relief when she found the pulse there.

“What happened?” she asked, looking around at Chloe. “I thought-”

“She’s…” Chloe shook her head. “I...I don’t know if ‘fine’ is the word, but...she’s alive. Now. Again. Sabrina-”

“You brought her back.” Maze’s head turned slowly to look at Sabrina, slumped as she was against Lucifer. “I didn’t think you could do that any more.”

Sabrina smiled, bright and exhausted and triumphant. “Me neither.” She didn’t look like some terrifying otherworldly creature anymore. Her own burns were still there, her dead arm still lying useless at her side. She should, Chloe thought, be back in bed. Her own cot, not Linda’s, and someone should be called to put the IV back in, because Chloe was quite sure doing it themselves could only end in trouble. There would be explanations needed - for how the IV had come out, for why Linda was suddenly alive and, so far as Chloe could tell, in perfect health when the ICU had given her up for dying - but those, Chloe thought, could be reckoned with, for this. A miracle. An actual, honest-to-God miracle, when she had thought that there were none to be had.

“She’s a harbinger,” Raguel said, in the same tone in which the sort of noirish movie detective he seemed to be channelling might say ‘she’s a lively one’ or similar.

“She is our _niece_.” Amenadiel moved to put himself between Lucifer and Raguel. “And she has committed no crime.”

Raguel quirked a brow. “Crimes are a human concept. You of all people should know that.” He dug in the pockets of his shabby coat, and withdrew a pack of cigarettes, then glared balefully up at the ‘no smoking’ sign above the door. “Mortal laws change from one patch of earth to another, one day to another, and half of them have nothing to do with Vengeance. Or Justice, for that matter, but who knows if _that_ was ever a part of the Design.”

“That’s _convenient_ ,” Lucifer spat.

Raguel shrugged. “It is what it is. And your girl there is a harbinger. You know what one of those is, don’t you?” _That_ was addressed to Sabrina herself, who blinked, looking a little startled to be addressed at all. “Something meant to announce the End.”

Sabrina’s chin went up, her shoulders back. “Yeah,” she said frostily. “I know. And I'm some _one_ , not some _thing_.”

“So, what?” Maze sneered. “You want to kill the kid over that? Because I count four of us and one of you, and you’re not what you were.”

Raguel put up his hands. “I don’t want to do anything. If the End is coming, the End is coming. That’s part of the Design, and it’ll have to play out, same as everything else.”

“So what are you doing here?” Chloe asked, her voice steady. She half-wanted to go for her gun, except that a gunshot would bring people running, and whether or not Raguel had been behind what happened to Chet Ruiz, Lucifer had given her enough of an idea of his power to know what a bad idea that would be.

Raguel shrugged. “Amenadiel brought me. And the demon.”

“Mazikeen,” Maze snapped at him, for what didn’t sound like the first time. 

Raguel went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I wanted to see if it was true. That the End might be coming. And now I know, I’ll be on my way.”

“Yeah, not so fast,” Chloe interrupted. “Where were you last night between the hours of midnight and three in the morning?”

Raguel grinned, sly and sideways and a little rueful. “Another investigator, is it? There was a man. A murderer. I pursued him.”

Well, that was as close to confirmation as Chloe was going to get. “Chet Ruiz?” she asked, her voice hard.

“No. Another man.”

“His name?”

“Sorry. Can’t tell you.”  
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t?”

“Won’t.” Raguel spread his hands. “He won’t do it again.”

That....was an open confession of murder, even if not the one they were investigating, and something roiled in the pit of Chloe’s stomach. Could she survive taking an angel into custody? Could she survive, if she didn’t?

“He’s alive, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Raguel added, almost casually.

“ _You_ left him alive?” Lucifer demanded, sounding incredulous. “A murderer. _You?_ ”

“Luci-” Amenadiel started.

“No, let him tell us!” Lucifer snapped. “When did _you_ discover mercy, Raguel?”

Raguel’s eyes flicked away. “...roundabout the same time you lost it, I’d imagine. Or did you think I hadn’t heard about your punishments?”

Lucifer laughed, low and sharp and bitter. “What, are you going to lecture me? Punishment is _mine_ , by Father’s order, remember? It was mine before it was ever yours.”

“Time was, you’d have been the first voice speaking out for mercy.” Raguel snorted, tucking away his pack of cigarettes into an inside pocket. “Now look at us both.”

Lucifer looked as if he’d been slapped.

“What happened to him?” Chloe put in quickly, before the argument could carry on without her. “This murderer you were after?”

Raguel turned his gaze on her. His eyes did not seem quite focused, she thought. As if he was looking straight through her. She rather wished he would stop.

“He is at peace.”

That...really didn’t do anything for Raguel’s claims that he hadn’t killed this guy, whoever he was, whatever he’d done.

Maze snorted. “So he isn’t alive, then. Humans are never ‘at peace’.” She paused, and then amended. “...or you sent him on a spa retreat. Linda took me on one once,” she added, at the look Amenadiel was giving her. “It wasn’t awful.”

Chloe could almost have laughed, less at Maze than at the fact that they could talk about this, so casually, that Linda was lying there, alive and well, and there would be more spa retreats, more karaoke nights, more conversations over drinks. _It wasn’t over!_ Nothing would need to change-

Everything already had.

“What-” Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. “What did you _do_?”

Raguel became, all at once, very preoccupied with his own hands. “...something I couldn’t do for Saraquael. And, from the sound of things, you all have bigger things to worry about.”

“He’s right,” Amenadiel cut in. “Luci, I know you have no reason to believe him, but believe me. Raguel didn’t kill Chet Ruiz, or Patrick. Mom is-”

“Regaining her powers. I worked that out for myself.” Lucifer said nastily. “Sounds like the perfect solution to all our problems. She blows herself up before she can murder anyone else. Sounds bloody _ideal_.”

Chloe didn’t think she was alone in feeling cold fingers on her neck at _that_ pronouncement. 

It was hard to say the Goddess didn’t deserve it, all told. Two people dead, and it would have been three if not for Sabrina. Four, if she’d got what she came for, and possibly the whole world besides. A nice, self-disposing bad guy sounded like heaven right now, but-

But she was still Lucifer’s mother.

Amenadiel looked nearly sick at the thought, and even Raguel looked, for the first time, perturbed.

Amenadiel’s face twisted. “Luci, I know she’s done some- some horrible things, but-”

“But _what_ , brother?” Lucifer snapped back. “We both know she isn’t going to stop until either she has what she wants, or she’s made sure Father can’t have what he wants either. And so long as she has that Horn-”

“She can’t _use_ it!” Amenadiel protested. “Nobody can, so long as Sabrina refuses. If Sabrina isn’t even anywhere near her-”

“What would be her plan B?” Chloe asked. “If- If the Horn isn’t an option, then-”

Amenadiel frowned. “Then...nothing, really. She can’t end the world without it. At least, not that directly. Luci, you can’t really mean-”

“You said she was going to ‘burst’,” Chloe pressed. “What...what exactly does that mean? How- Would it be like a- a bomb going off? Or-”

Amenadiel’s face had gone ashen. “I- I don’t know. This has never happened before. Mom’s powers are still returning, but the effects of that much divine light spilling out in the middle of LA could be...cataclysmic.”

Chloe could picture it. A _Goddess_ , exploding in the middle of LA? The Goddess of Creation herself, no less, who’d once drowned most of the Middle East in a fit of pique about having grandchildren. They’d be lucky if this didn’t take out the entire West Coast.

“...define ‘cataclysmic’?” Maze asked, frowning. “I mean, no offence, princess, but if she was still on that level, you’d never have survived it.”

“ _Thanks_ ,” Sabrina muttered. “Really. You know, I fought _your_ mother and won one time…”

“While she was possessing your teacher, right?” Maze grinned. “Come back when you’ve beaten her in Hell, then we’ll talk.”

“She isn’t _going_ to Hell,” Lucifer snapped. 

Maze snorted. “Not like I’m going back either, with _Mom_ in charge down there.”

“We can’t let her explode,” Chloe cut in, before they could go off on another tangent - apparently truly awful parenting was a constant in both Heaven _and_ Hell - “We can’t- I don’t want to take the chance. We can’t be sure her death won’t take a lot of other people along with her. We need another solution.”

“Lucifer has one, I believe.” Raguel’s voice was mild, but Chloe could see the way Lucifer’s face paled, if possible, still further. He looked like a ghost in his smoke-stained suit. “It should be in his inside jacket pocket,” Raguel went on. “If he’s up for using it, of course.”

“ _No_.” Lucifer’s throat worked through a swallow. “Why- Why is everyone so keen for me to kill her? She’s your mother too, isn’t she?”

“I’m not sure you have much of a choice,” Maze spoke up. “Like you said. She dies, this whole place goes up. She goes Upstairs, this whole place goes up. Seems like there’s only one option left.”

Lucifer’s eyes went wide. “...not just _one_.” He rounded on Amenadiel. “I need your piece.”

“What-”

“The _necklace_ , brother. I need it, just hand it over.”

Amenadiel gaped at him, one hand already going to his necklace. “You...you’re going to do it? You’re going to use the Sword?”

“I’m…” Lucifer drew in a breath. “I’m going to try. Maybe throw her back into Hell and let her and Lilith fight it out for the Queenship, I don’t know, but it _has_ to be better than using Azrael’s Blade on her.”

It would, Chloe thought, be much easier to understand whether this was a good plan or a bad one if anyone had found the time to explain any of this to her. Or if she’d gotten over herself that bit earlier, and gone to Lucifer herself, before Zeke Moore’s death had forced him to come to her. But it was too late for that.

“Okay. So...you send her down to Hell...what happens then?” she asked. “I mean...she goes to Heaven...awful consequences down here. But if she’s in Hell, and in charge of Hell…”

“Then she’s...the ruler of Hell.” The way Lucifer’s face shifted through about three different expressions before settling on ‘horrified’ would have been funny under any other circumstances. As it was, all it inspired was a sort of cold dread. “...she might not win?” he tried, not sounding all that convinced.

Maze snorted. “Yeah. Full offence to my mom, but there’s not enough firepower in all of Hell to stand up to a Goddess. There wasn’t enough to stand up to _you_.”

“I’ve fought the forces of Hell before.” Sabrina’s jaw was set. “And it’s- It’s got to be better than having her up here, right?”

Chloe...couldn’t argue either side of that. She wanted the Goddess as far away from LA as it was possible to get, and whether that was the other side of the universe or a whole other dimension was all the same to her. But- By the sound of it, Baphomet had caused enough trouble, and he’d only been a demon - and not even a particularly strong one, from the way Lucifer talked about him. What might the Goddess do, with the same resources?

“It doesn’t sound like we have much of a choice,” she pointed out grimly. “Unless Purgatory is a thing after all?”

Lucifer made a dismissive noise.”That one really is just down to people who looked at the afterlife and didn’t like the odds.”

“Oh.”

That was...terrifying. Not least because it was the only option Chloe had seen for people who might not be evil enough for Hell, but certainly didn’t yet warrant Heaven. Since that was most of humanity, she’d have to scream into a pillow about that for a few hours later.

She swallowed.

“How long do we have?”

The angels and demon exchanged looks.

“...we don’t know,” Amenadiel admitted. “We’ve never- Nothing like this has ever _happened_ before, in the whole history of the universe. We didn’t even know her powers would return at all, never mind how quickly. For all I know, she could’ve already blown and nobody noticed-”

“Okay. Let’s assume that _hasn’t_ happened. Where would she go?”

That, apparently, was a more difficult question.

“There’s her apartment?” Amenadiel offered after a second.

Lucifer made an impatient noise. “Yes, except now Mum knows we’re going to be after her. Or _I_ am, at least. And she knows we know where her apartment is.”

“...would she have her phone on her?” Chloe asked, thinking back to the previous night. What were the odds that, overnight, the Goddess had learnt to turn off her phone tracking, without any provocation, because Chloe hadn’t brought it up.

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see why she shouldn’t.”

“Then I can find her. But I’m going to need backup. I can’t- You said it yourself. Goddesses are a bit out of my…” _League._ “Jurisdiction. I don’t know how to send her back to Hell, and even if I did...something tells me she wouldn’t find it that hard to swat me like a gnat if I got too close to her.”

“I can-” Sabrina started, trying to straighten up.

“Oh, no.” Lucifer jabbed a finger at her. “For once in your life, _you_ are going to stay here and let the adults take care of it.”

“ _Dad_ -”

“I don’t care _how_ much you want a rematch, she’d destroy you. She nearly did already - are you _that_ keen to give her another chance?”

“Stop fussing, I’m fine-”

“You really aren’t,” Chloe said, before she could think better of it. “I know...I know I’m the last person you’d want to listen to, right now, and I’m-” She wished there wasn’t an audience for this part. “I’m sorry. I really am. But you shouldn’t even be out of bed right now. I’m sure the doctors are going to have a fit when they see you pulled the IV out-”

“You’re right,” Sabrina snapped. “You _are_ the last person I want to listen to!”

“You just brought someone back from the dead,” Chloe reminded her. “I- I’m not an expert, or I wouldn’t have screwed up quite this epically, but I’m pretty sure that’s enough of a contribution for anyone.”

And...might also bring about the end of the world, if Raguel was right. But he’d also said that the world couldn’t end without Sabrina blowing Gabriel’s Horn to usher in the end. For now, Linda was alive, and so was Sabrina. They could work the rest out later. If there was a ‘later’, which there wouldn’t be if the Goddess managed to level all of LA in her death throes before they could shove her into Hell, however they were planning to do that.

“And if she comes back?” Maze demanded. “I’m good, but if she’s wiping the floor with the princess this easily-”

“She didn’t ‘wipe the floor with me’! I was _winning_!”

“You nearly died, kid.”

Sabrina flashed something that might have been a pale shadow of a smirk. “But she didn’t get what she wanted.”

“...one day, hellspawn,” Lucifer said, “We’re going to have to have a talk about the difference between ‘winning’ and ‘not losing’. We’re aiming for that first one, just so we’re clear.”

She glared at him. “Then who else is going to be going? You? Without your wings? Amenadiel, without his? Against _her_ ? Unless Raguel’s going too. I can _help_ -”

“You don’t have to,” Chloe said quickly. “And it’s not a discussion. _You_ are staying here, until they discharge you properly, and it doesn’t sound like we’ve got time to wait for that. I need…” she paused. Lucifer might well want to remain here. Of all of them, it was Maze who had the least reason for wanting to avoid this. It was not her mother that they would be...executing? Exiling? What could you call casting someone into Hell - _literal_ Hell, with fire and brimstone and demons - while still alive? Whatever it was...they’d be doing it to their own mother, because they were the only ones who could. “I need someone with me who knows what they’re dealing with.”

Lucifer started. “You’re coming?”

“Yeah.” Chloe crossed her arms. “This is my case. I brought you in on it. I don’t know what I’m going to put in the report, but...I have to see this done.” She paused, and then asked, not sure what she wanted the answer to be: “Are you?”

There was a quiet, still pause.  
“I’m going to have to, since I’m apparently the only one who can use this thing,” Lucifer said, and if the words were glib, the tone he said them in wasn’t. “ _Full_ offence intended,” he added, glancing at Raguel, “But I don’t trust you with Sabrina, and I don’t want you with me. So, thanks for telling us it wasn’t you who sorted out Chet Ruiz, but if you don’t have any _other_ revelations for us-”

“I thought we were trying to avoid Revelations,” Raguel said, and snorted. “But as I’m the only angel here not Fallen-”

“ _You’re_ claiming that?” Amenadiel’s voice was incredulous. “After everything?”

“I’m still doing my job, as I see it.” Raguel straightened up a little, and met Amenadiel’s eyes squarely. “Which of you two can say the same?”

There was a long, pained silence, in which all the breath went out of Amenadiel in one sudden, shocking rush.

Raguel gave a slight, satisfied nod, as if to say ‘there you go, then’, and looked around at the rest of them.

“I’m not leaving Linda,” Maze said, crossing her arms. “If that bitch comes back here, she’s not going to get another shot at her.”

Amenadiel looked torn. He cast a long look at Linda and Maze, and then shifted, his shoulders squaring. “I’ll come. I- She might listen to me. More than you, anyway.”

Chloe spared a thought for the absolute _nightmare_ that seemed to be celestial family dynamics, and nodded.

“Okay. I’m going to call Dan, tell him it’s Charlotte we’re after, and that we suspect that whatever weapon she used to kill Chet and Patrick is still on her-”

“Patrick’s dead?”

Chloe wanted to curse herself. Sabrina looked utterly horror-struck, pale and sickened.

“That’s not on you,” she said quickly. “She…”

“Mum went to the penthouse first,” Lucifer said, his mouth twisting. “Patrick caught her - or she caught him - on her way out. She was after the Blade,” he added, as Sabrina’s face began to twist. “She wants to go home, and the Horn can’t do that for her. Not the way she is now. Going after you was Plan B. Patrick’s death didn’t happen because of that.”

 _Because of you_ , Chloe filled in. God, how much damage had she _done_ ? The more she heard, the more it felt like she’d jarred an injury that hadn’t quite healed yet, without realising there was anything there to injure at all. Or- No. Not without realising. She’d known about the deaths of Sabrina’s classmates, her friends, her community. She just hadn’t thought, in that moment, that they _mattered_. The thought left an awful, sick taste of bile in her mouth. She wished she could un-think it - both the realisation and the original stupidity - but she couldn’t.

Sabrina’s face smoothed out - not in acceptance, but like wiping a board clean. And, like a cleaned whiteboard, the shadows were still there. 

“You’re wasting time,” she said, and her voice was steady, her eyes dark. “She could be anywhere by now, and you don’t know how long you have before the whole city goes up.”

Lucifer’s fingers brushed through her fair hair. “My spawn is right.” He paused, and then added, quietly. “We’ll be back soon. We _will_ come back.”

Sabrina butted her head against his hand like a cat. “I know you will.” She bit her lip. “Be safe. All of you,” she added, turning her head to look first at Amenadiel, and then at Chloe.

It wasn’t forgiveness, Chloe thought. She hadn’t earned that yet. Maybe she’d never get a chance to. But she smiled, all the same.

* * *

Santa Monica Pier. It had sounded absurd, when she’d told Dan, almost comical. Even he’d asked if she was sure. It had stopped being funny almost immediately.

Even at this hour - mid-afternoon on a weekday - the pier would be busy and crowded. People going on rides, eating midway food, playing games, talking and chattering and laughing and absolutely heedless that they might all go up in a fiery inferno, all at once. Had that been deliberate, Chloe wondered? One last great act of spite against...humanity? God? The universe at large, which might be the same thing?

Dan met them there.

“I got your message - you’re sure it’s Charlotte?”

He sounded like he didn’t want to believe his ears. Chloe couldn’t blame him. Maybe it should’ve been satisfying, to see him realising that the woman he’d fallen in love with, trusted, slept with wasn’t who he’d thought. It wasn’t. 

She nodded, slow and grudging, because it wasn’t Charlotte Richards who was behind this, not really, and even if they’d never liked each other...the real woman would never have thought of doing this. But Charlotte Richards’ memory mattered less than all these people’s lives, and for that, they needed to deal with the Goddess.  
“Sabrina saw her, during the attack on her and Linda.” Chloe paused, wondering how much she could safely say, and then charged in headlong anyway.. “They’re...they’re going to be okay. Both of them.”

Dan’s face slackened with relief and incredulity. “Really? Even Linda?”  
“Even Linda,” Chloe confirmed. “It...uh...looked worse than it turned out. She’s going to be _fine_.”

She still couldn’t quite believe it herself. That Linda would wake up - might be waking up even now - and maybe not even realise what had happened, how close they’d all come to losing her. Would she even remember being dead, Chloe wondered? Or would they have to tell her that too?

Dan looked faintly punch-drunk with relief, dizzy. “And...wait, Sabrina _saw_ Charlotte? In the building?”

“Yes.”

“...how?” Dan’s eyes narrowed. “I mean...she might’ve been there for any reason, how did she-”

“She wasn’t...especially clear,” Chloe hedged. “But from what I can tell...Charlotte was trying to attack Sabrina when Linda got in the way. A shot must’ve gone wide or something, and the building went up. Dan- I’m so sorry. So far as any of us can tell, it’s the same weapon that was used on Patrick and Chet Ruiz, and- and there’s more.”

“More?” Dan was staring now, wide-eyed and looking slightly sick. “You’re telling me Charlotte committed three murders and it gets _worse_?”

Chloe nodded. “Yeah. This- This weapon. It’s unstable. We…” she stopped dead as the rest of Dan’s words caught up with her. “What...what do you mean _three_?”

“You didn’t hear? I mean...I guess you wouldn’t’ve, but…while you were at the hospital, I...I had to go check out Kathleen Lyon’s alibi. Ava Lyon’s dead. Same way as Chet. Same burns, same everything. Body looked pretty fresh when we got there.”

Dandy Lyon Cleaners was on the other side of the city from Linda’s practice in Beverly Hills, was Chloe’s first thought. But then...they were dealing with a Goddess. Who knew how much of her power she’d already regained? Enough to move that quickly? It wasn’t as though Chloe had any particularly defined ideas about what a Goddess ought to be capable of, or what her powers returning actually _meant_.

“That’s...God. Covering her tracks?”

“I guess.” Dan looked faintly sick. “What...what about this weapon?”

It took Chloe a moment to remember the story. She swallowed. “We think it might be a bomb threat. I don’t know if she knows,” she added quickly, “But we need to get these people out of here, quickly, and without letting Charlotte find out why.”

Dan looked, for a moment, as if he might actually be sick. 

“...a bombing, here?” He looked around. “...we’re going to need more back-up.”

“Too obvious. Can you arrange an evacuation? _Quietly_ ,” Chloe added. “Talk to the staff, there ought to be procedures in place. Maybe pass it off as some kind of technical fault? Lucifer and I can handle Charlotte.”

She thought that Dan might protest - she would, in his place. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to bring Dan in, when it was him, even if he’d sidestepped the problem, in the end, by turning himself in before she had to. He looked like he was about to, and then an odd, rueful look flashed across his face.

“You don’t trust me to arrest her?”

Chloe gave a helpless sort of shrug. “I’m just thinking about how this will look if we have to defend it in front of a jury. You know what she’s like in court.”

“Oh. Right. Good point.” Dan leaned around to look behind her. “...you brought Amenadiel? And...who’s the other guy?”

Chloe looked back at Raguel, in all his faintly-sleazy film-noir clichedom, and had to stop and consider it.

“...Lucifer knows him. He’s...another of their siblings, apparently. He was Lucifer’s first suspect, since he was the last person known to have this weapon.”

“Then how do you know he’s not guilty? At least of Chet’s murder. I know attacking Linda was terrible, but-”

“Their mom had one too.” Chloe swallowed. “I think...it’s been a long time since Charlotte Richards did anything that didn’t serve Lucifer’s mother’s agenda.”

That, at least, was technically true. She was going to have to work in a lot of technical truths from now on. She couldn’t say she liked it. It would be hard enough to explain this without losing her job or ending up in an institution.

“Then what about her? Did they tell you where to find her?”

“She’s already abandoned her apartment,” Chloe said quickly. “Charlotte Richards knows where she is. Look- We don’t have time to argue, every second we waste gives her more time to set off the weapon. We need to start that evacuation and get her away from the pier.”

Dan didn’t look _happy_ about it, but he nodded. “I’ll get that moving. Chlo- You’re sure about this?”

“...as sure as I’ve been about anything. I’m sorry.”

Dan gave another jerky, mechanical little nod, and hurried off towards the first member of staff he could see. Chloe, meanwhile, looked around, and saw the three angels already heading over.

“Where is she?”

Lucifer looked terrible. Truthfully, all three of them did. Raguel less than either of his brothers, but even he had lost some of the self-assurance he’d shown at the hospital. Chloe tried to imagine standing in their place now, knowing her mother might murder thousands of people, and that she was the only one who could stop her. It left an awful lurching, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She’d never been close to her mother, exactly - John Decker had been more reliably _around_ than Penelope ever was, and once Chloe started taking acting jobs, her relationship with her mother had frayed even further, and only got worse after she decided to quit acting for good. They drove each other up the wall as often as not, but Chloe couldn’t imagine killing her, or even just imprisoning her.

“She’s by the carousel,” she said quietly. Lucifer snorted. “...what?”  
“Nothing. Just...fitting.” His eyes flicked over towards Raguel. “This all started with a Carasel, ever all.”

“What happened that day was not my decision.” Raguel’s voice was flat. “You know what it means, when your function comes upon you.”

The hairs went up on the back of Chloe’s neck.

“But you’d do it again,” Amenadiel said, a little shakily. It wasn’t an accusation, Chloe thought. But it would have been, if it had been Lucifer saying it. She could see that in his face, white and drawn, lips pressed tight together. From Amenadiel...it sounded like he wanted reassurance. He didn’t get it.

“It was my function,” Raguel said. “That didn’t make it _just_. But it was what I was created for. If I were there again, I could not act otherwise.”

Chloe half-wanted to ask, wanted to _know_ \- But they had a bomb threat to deal with, or something comparable to one, and they couldn’t waste any more time.

“We need a plan to deal with her. Is...is this something she can control? I mean…” she huffed a breath. “Is she likely to...detonate herself early if we try to get her away from the pier?”

She hadn’t been trained for this. Suicide bombings were so very far out of Chloe’s league that she honestly considered it an achievement that she wasn’t gibbering just from the stress of that, and never mind the religious aspects.

Lucifer made a disgruntled noise. “She’s not a _bomb_ , Detective. She can’t control how fast her powers return, or what they’ll do to her when they do.”

That was a relief, at least.

“Okay. But she- Can she do to you what she did to Chet and Patrick?”

The angels exchanged looks.

“...probably not to me or Raguel,” Lucifer said after a moment. “Amenadiel...might be in a bit more trouble.”

Something else to ask about, Chloe thought. But not now.

“Okay. You...you two should take the lead, then. What would work to get her out of here?”

“I can only think of one thing.” Amenadiel’s voice was grim. “You have all the pieces of the Sword, Luci. If you tell her you have it, and you’re willing to cut her a gateway…”

“What, just not tell her where to?” Lucifer paused, and shook his head. “I’ll try it.”

“She has to know you’d do anything to keep her away from Sabrina,” Chloe offered. “I- You can use that, if you have to.”

“I _do_ know how to do this, Detective.” Lucifer’s voice was hollow. “Let’s go.”

The Goddess was waiting by the carousel, leaning on the rail.

She looked up as they approached.

“Detective Decker. You’ve changed sides again.”

Chloe shrugged. “You killed three people.”

“And that matters to you?” The Goddess shook her head. “I’ll never understand why you concern yourselves with two little humans. You, I suppose, have the excuse of being one yourself, but-” she made to look around at her sons, and broke off with a harsh, choky noise at the sight of them that Chloe couldn’t understand.

“ _You_ ,” she hissed, glaring daggers at them. “I should have known it would be you.”

“Hello, Mother,” said Raguel.

The Goddess seethed.

“And you have the _gall_ to complain about two little humans, and still work with this-” she spat out a word in that same odd, sharp-edged language Sabrina had spoken in in the hospital. 

Raguel almost flinched. Lucifer actually did. Chloe shot a questioning look at him, but he barely seemed to notice it. Even Amenadiel looked troubled. Chloe...was really going to have to ask about that at some point. Later, she told herself. If they lived that long.

“We’re not here about anything they did,” she said, before this whole thing could get derailed into yet another Morningstar family row. “We’re here because you murdered Chet Ruiz, Patrick Ellis and Ava Lyon.”

A furrow formed between the Goddess’s eyebrows. “The cleaner’s dead?” she asked, sounding for the first time genuinely taken aback. “Well, that’s unfortunate. I certainly had nothing to do with _that_.”

Chloe stopped cold.

“But- If you didn’t-” she started.

“I’d be careful.” Lucifer’s voice was hard. “Mum doesn’t have my scruples about lying.”

The Goddess snorted. “Why would I lie about this? Whatever it is you’re planning to do to me in this crowd, you’ll do it whether or not I killed one little human.”

“She’s right,” Chloe agreed hollowly. “If- If she was going to deny any of them, it’d be Patrick.” He was the only one, after all, who hadn’t been guilty of anything.

“Who?” The Goddess still sounded baffled now, and impatient. Chloe could almost _hear_ Lucifer’s teeth grinding.

“Patrick Ellis. My bartender?”

“Oh. Him.” She shrugged. “I’d almost forgotten about that one. Still, you always can get a new bartender-”

“We’re not just here about the _bartender_ , Mom!” Amenadiel cut in. “We’re here because- Because your powers are coming back, and it’s...they’re too much. Too much for this sphere, and we thought…” He trailed off, apparently still groping for something to say.

“Maybe you might consider...a change of scenery?” Lucifer tried. “I mean...you certainly don’t want to stay on this plane any longer than strictly necessary, do you?”

The Goddess’s expression was flat. “A change of scenery,” she repeated. “You expect me to believe that you’re offering me a way home? After _weeks_ of locking me out of your home, forcing me to corner you at work just to speak to you at all, and siding with that- that _mongrel_ over your own family. _Now_ you want me to believe that you’ll help me?”

“...I never said it wouldn’t be _conditional_ ,” Lucifer said, extemporising wildly. “If I send you back where you came from, you have to leave Sabrina alone. No floods. No plagues. No torments if she ends up there after she does eventually die-”

The Goddess made a contemptuous noise. “Oh, please. As if your father _or_ I would let it into the Silver City.” Her eyes narrowed. “...that’s quite a lot to put on trust, given you accused me of having the awful creature abducted by witch-hunters just a few weeks ago.”

“I don’t have much of a _choice_ here, Mum!” Lucifer snapped, his voice cracking. “Just- Come with us, away from all these people, and I can send you back. What other options do you have? Stay here and burst when your powers get too much for that body to contain?”

The Goddess’s eyes glittered malevolently. “So that’s why you’re here. All these little humans…” she looked around in pure disdain. “I don’t understand why you value them so highly. Such _small_ , limited lives. Oh, I don’t doubt they can be...entertaining...but you can find entertainment _anywhere_.”

Chloe was, abruptly, very glad that Dan wasn’t here to hear this.

“Mom,” Amenadiel said, low and harsh. “You can’t- Don’t tell me you’re willing to _die_ , just to spite Father and destroy the humans. Don’t-”

The Goddess gave an exasperated sort of sigh. “Oh, I don’t doubt it would catch his attention. But if I were to return…” she paused. “That is the bargain, then? Cut me a doorway back to the Silver City, in exchange for which, I will not destroy your abomination?”

“She’s not an _abomination_!” Chloe snapped, guilt roiling in the pit of her stomach at how close it was to some of the things she’d thought, in that initial panic.

The Goddess gave her a faint, pitying look, then looked back at her sons. “Well?” she asked.

Lucifer paused, his throat visibly working through a swallow. “If you spare Sabrina, I’ll send you back,” he said roughly.

“Back to the Silver City?” the Goddess pressed. “Say it. Out loud.”

Lucifer was silent, and the Goddess’s mouth curled back in a snarl.

She moved faster than Chloe could see. One moment, she was still, and the next, she had Lucifer by the collar, lifting him one-handed with her hand about his throat. Chloe’s hand went for her gun without her conscious direction.

“ _Don’t_!” Amenadiel rasped out, and for a moment Chloe didn’t know who he was speaking to - her or the Goddess. She could hear shouts and cries of alarm from the carousel - the evacuation hadn’t got this far yet - but they seemed very distant, somehow. “If you shoot her, the light will escape - that’s what happened to Chet Ruiz, isn’t it?” Amenadiel’s voice was nearly pleading. “That’s why you were at Linda’s this morning, why you needed someone to help patch you up-”

The Goddess smiled. It was an awful expression, tears in her eyes, her lips twitching, and for a moment, Chloe could almost pity her.

“You always were the clever one of the family,” she said, low and soft and almost fond despite the biting edge to her voice. “Was this your plan?”

Amenadiel couldn’t meet her eyes. “Mom...Mom, you didn’t leave us any _choice-_ ”

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you,” the Goddess spat. “For our _family_ . And now, you’re choosing these humans over that? Over the Silver City, and the chance to go _home_?”

“I want to go home,” Amenadiel admitted, his voice raw and rasping. “I wanted it...more than anything. But not- Not like this.”

Lucifer’s feet were dangling some inches off the ground, and Chloe could see people scattering off the carousel - running away, or running for help, if they were unlucky. Probably they’d try and report this to security, which would bring more people who might see or overhear or, at worst, be caught in the blast with them. They needed to get out of here, but so long as the Goddess held Lucifer, they couldn’t.

She regretted that thought an instant later.

“I thought you _understood_ !” the Goddess snapped, her voice cracking. “I thought you were on my side. But apparently the little _parasite_ has gotten to you as well.”

“Mom-” Amenadiel started, taking a cautious step forward. “Mom, I understand. You’re angry, but-”

“Angry?” the Goddess repeated. “Oh, I’m not _angry_.” She caught hold of Amenadiel’s jacket. “Just disappointed.”

What happened next, happened almost too fast for Chloe to take it all in. One moment they were there, the next-

There was a terrible loud _crash_ as the bodies hit the carousel, a cracking of wood and screech of metal, and when Chloe looked, the carousel was a wreck of itself, horses lying scattered every which way, and a dent - an actual dent - in the elaborately-carved centre pillar. There was a scream from the far side - everyone was, thank g- _somebody_ , already off the carousel, but that wasn’t the same thing as all out. Chloe could see the Goddess bolting for it out of the corner of her eye, Raguel already in pursuit. Chloe should have followed them- 

She didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead, she picked her way through the broken horses, the fallen carriage.

“Lucifer?” she called out. “Lucifer!”

A weak groan met her ears. Nearby, Amenadiel was already getting to his feet. Slowly, yes, but he didn’t seem to be in any sort of pain. Chloe’s heart twisted in relief, but- When she looked around, there was blood on the central pillar, and she heard another soft, pained noise somewhere nearby.

Lucifer was half-trapped under a fallen horse, pale as a ghost and bleeding profusely at the back of the head, blood matting his dark hair and trickling down his neck. Head wounds always bled like anything, but this one looked nasty, and Lucifer was a very long way from invincible, whatever he had once been.

“Well,” he gritted out, reaching up one hand and giving the fingers a dirty look when they came away bloodied, as if he’d expected to be uninjured just by sheer force of will. Maybe he could, ordinarily. “ _That_ went worse than expected.”

Amenadiel made an irritated noise. “It might’ve gone _better_ if you’d just...told her what she wanted to hear. Or just _nodded_ , maybe? All that ‘I will send you back’ stuff was really, unnecessarily ominous, so of _course_ she was suspicious. _Nice_.”

“I don’t _lie_ , brother!”

“What exactly did you call that, then?”

Lucifer paused, having half-struggled out from under the fallen carousel horse. “...a creative interpretation of the truth.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie, Luci!”  
“You all right?” Chloe cut in, catching hold of Lucifer’s hand to tug him up, before he could reply. His hand was very warm in hers, and didn’t feel any less human, any less flesh and blood, now than it ever had.

He snorted, clambering slowly and laboriously to his feet. He was favouring his right side, she could see. How badly hurt _was_ he?

Badly enough that he was still unsteady on his feet, at least, and Lucifer- Either he’d scream it to the heights if he so much as stubbed his toe, or he bore injuries with a white-knuckled determination to never show weakness that had always tugged uncomfortably at somewhere in Chloe’s chest, at the thought of what might have inculcated such a response in him. She still didn’t know what it had been.

“Oh, I’m just fine,” he drawled. “Mum’s run off, and might be about to level this whole city, she knows we’re planning to send her straight back to Hell and- Where’d Raguel get to?”

Chloe looked around. There was no sign of him.

“He must’ve gone after her,” she said, hope rising. “He- How powerful is he, exactly?”

“When fulfilling his function?” Amenadiel asked. “As powerful as Father. As he is now…” he shook his head. “I cannot believe he hasn’t fallen, whatever he might say. He’ll be weaker.”

“Not necessarily.” Lucifer looked grim. “And so long as he’s fulfilling that function...he’s equal in power to Father. Father expressing his will through Raguel...and _I_ saw him in action with Saraquael.”

Amenadiel looked, all of a sudden, faintly sick, and Chloe tucked that away. Another question to ask, when this was all over, if anyone was going to agree to answer. She wasn’t forgiven yet, after all. Maybe she wouldn’t be - she couldn’t say Lucifer or Sabrina didn’t have the right. In all the panic, they’d fallen back into old patterns because they couldn’t afford to do anything else, and because habit had overwhelmed everything. Once this was over...that would change.

“He’ll kill her,” Lucifer said, low and sharp and desperate. “We have to go. Now, we-”

“...would that be so bad?” she asked, hating herself for saying it.  
Lucifer looked as if she’d hit him. Chloe couldn’t blame him. Monstrous or not, she was his mother. She didn’t like the thought herself, but-

“If she can’t be stopped any other way, then....” she began.

“ _No_.” Lucifer had gone pale, but she couldn’t tell if that was horror or blood loss. “Do you just- Are you going to keep doing this? We’re not human, so-”

“That isn’t why-!” Chloe stopped. Wasn’t it? If this had been a human, threatening...a nuclear bombing, say, the only catastrophe Chloe could think of on the right scale...would she have been so willing to stand aside and see them murdered? She didn’t know. “Okay,” she said. “So we go after her. Lucifer, can you.”

“I’ll be fine, Detective,” Lucifer gritted out, and he could not have sounded less fine if he tried. “And _before_ you get it into your head to shoot her, that’s only going to make that body deteriorate faster.”

“I’d worked that out for myself, thanks.”

She felt stung by the implication, though she couldn’t say why - would that be any worse than standing by and letting Raguel do it? She tried to force that thought away, but it lingered anyway, in the back of her mind.

The fleeing crowd had taken the far entrance, to get as far away from the Goddess as they could, so the way they had come was clear. With any luck, Dan had managed to get them folded into the evacuation procedures he should have set in motion by now. If he hadn’t- Chloe trusted Dan, but evacuations could get...chaotic, at the best of times, and she didn’t know how far away they would need to be to survive this, if it all went wrong.

It wasn’t hard to spot Raguel and the Goddess, when they emerged back into the blinding sunlight. They were standing at the foot of the ferris wheel. The pier wasn’t quite deserted yet - someone had set up a perimeter, and Chloe could see the crowds being herded away - but this part of it, at least, was clear.

Raguel had one hand outstretched, and Chloe couldn’t see his face. She could see the Goddess’s, though, and, for the first time since Chloe had known her for what she was, the Goddess seemed afraid.

“Hey!” Chloe called, “Step away!”

Raguel didn’t even look around, but Chloe could see his shoulders slump that little bit lower as his hand stretched out towards his mother.

“I said _step away_ !” She swallowed. “Look-” she holstered her gun. “I get it. I really do. I don’t want this city to die any more than you do. But-” But _what?_ Chloe still wasn’t sure that whatever Raguel intended wasn’t the only option, and if he was willing to do it...wasn’t that better than forcing Lucifer or Amenadiel to kill their own mother against their will?

It would be murder...but she wanted to live. She wanted Dan to live, and Trixie, and Ella, and Linda, and she couldn’t see another way forward.

“Mum.” Lucifer swallowed. “You can- Fine! You can _have_ the bloody sword! I’ll _give_ it to you-”

“What are you _doing_?” Amenadiel hissed.

“Do you have any _other_ ideas?” Lucifer hissed back. “All I want in exchange-”

“Is the life of your mongrel.” The Goddess made a contemptuous noise. “You already lied to me once. How can I trust you this time?”

“I’m _giving_ you the Sword!” Lucifer snapped. “How am I supposed to trick you about _that_ ? And all you have to do, Mum, the _only_ thing you have to do...is nothing at all. Come on. Even _you_ can’t turn down a deal like that! Just- Go back, and...kill Dad or reconcile with him or _whatever_ it is you’re going to do, and let us _be_!”

The Goddess’s mouth half-opened, and Chloe knew, she _knew_ , without quite knowing how she knew it, that she would refuse-

“No-one’s going anywhere!”

It took a moment to place the voice. A moment longer than it took to look around.

“Well,” the Goddess said, still eerily calm, looking down the barrel of Hector Ruiz’s gun with no more concern than she might give an irritating street preacher. “I think you’ve found your mystery killer.”

“How can you be so _glib_ !” Hector yelled - god, his finger was still on the trigger, one twitch and he’d blow them all quite literally to kingdom come - “You were our _lawyer_! You betrayed us!”

“Put the gun down, Hector,” Chloe said steadily, drawing her own and levelling at him.

He did not, in fact, put the gun down.

“Thank you for leading me to her, detective. You promised to approach this fairly, and you did. But now I have to make things right for my family.”  
“A little wrinkle!” Lucifer cut in. “You shoot her, and we’re all dead, okay?”

“He’s right.” Chloe swallowed.This wasn’t good. Hector could probably only get off one shot before Chloe returned fire, but if he even winged the Goddess- “She- She’s got a bomb, Hector. Dead man’s switch. She dies, we all go up.”

“That’s not...that’s not how she operates.” Hector was wavering now, Chloe could see it. If they could just keep him that way long enough that he wouldn’t shoot- “Why would she do that? It’d kill her too!”

“I don’t think that matters to her anymore.” Chloe swallowed. “Look, I promised you justice for your brother. You’ll have it. Just...put down the gun.””

“Justice?” Hector’s voice cracked. “You’ve seen this woman in a courtroom, detective. How many of your other arrests did she get off? And Chet-” he shook his head. “I know what they’ll say about Chet. That he deserved it, that he brought it on himself-”

“I mean,” the Goddess muttered. “He _did_ stab me first-”

Chloe didn’t see Chet’s finger twitch on the trigger. She heard the gunshot, though, and her ears popped as if she’d been flung, all at once, into the upper atmosphere and somehow survived the experience. Her first thought was that she ought to have been dead already by now.

And then she realised that the Goddess wasn’t there. Nor was Lucifer, and Amenadiel was almost grey with exhaustion as he brought his hands apart.

Chloe was a second too late in realising that there was no sign of Raguel, and then she looked around.

Hector Ruiz’s gun had fallen to the ground, and it was a wonder nobody had been shot in the foot just from that. Raguel had him by the shoulder and was drawing away from his face, as if she’d interrupted them in the middle of a kiss, Hector blinking around with a look of absolute, stricken confusion in his face.

Chloe stared. “What…” she glanced around, trying to take in all the ways the world had completely reshaped itself in that instant of the gun going off, and couldn’t begin to find where to start. “...what did you do to him?” she settled on, that being the most immediate concern.

Raguel blinked those great, dark eyes at her. “Took his sin away. He can go freely, now, and sin no more.”

“Yeah, no.” Chloe straightened up. “He’s murdered at least one person today. That has to be paid for. You don’t get to decide it doesn’t.”

“The sin’s been taken from him,” Raguel repeated. “He isn’t the same man anymore.”

A chill went through Chloe. “...what does that mean?”

“...what…?” Hector was staring around wildly. “...how- What am I doing here?” 

Chloe sighed, and got out the handcuffs.

“Hector Ruiz, you are under arrest for the murder of Ava Lyon and the attempted murder of Charlotte Richards. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law…”

Hector blinked at her. “...Ava who?”

The bottom dropped out of Chloe’s stomach.

Raguel had _taken his sin away_ , he had said. Had this been what he meant? Was- Was it possible he could have really done it? That Ava Lyon was out there, even now, alive and well and with no notion of what she had been spared?  
A few hours ago, Chloe would never have entertained the thought, but since then she had seen her friend’s teenage daughter resurrect the dead, and the world transformed entirely in the space of a breath. It seemed like a day for miracles. She looked around, trying to catch Raguel’s eye, and ask, as best she could, what the hell he had done- But he wasn’t there. Just a sound like something between the rustling of wings and the sweep of that ridiculous noir-detective coat.

“He was telling the truth.” Amenadiel’s voice was harsh and hoarse. “He really isn’t fallen. I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of us,” Chloe muttered. “Where- Where’s Lucifer? And your mom?”

Amenadiel’s jaw shifted. “Down there. I saw them fall from the pier…” He shook his head. “They can’t have gone far - I couldn’t hold it for very long.”

They’d survived, Chloe told herself. They must have done, or she wouldn’t still be alive to worry. And she had a job to do. Whatever Raguel had done to Hector Ruiz...he’d killed a woman today. Maybe she was alive now and maybe she wasn’t, but it wasn’t that simple, to wipe his crime away.

All the same, she tugged him after her as she and Amenadiel made for the rail to look down at the beach below, her heart hammering in her ears so loudly she could barely hear his protests above the roar.

And there Charlotte was, lying still - dead, Chloe thought at first, _truly_ dead, before she saw the body stirring - in the sand with Lucifer standing over her, the sunset painting the whole scene in shades of red. She couldn’t see Lucifer’s face at this distance, but his shoulders were slumped and heaving irregularly, as if he’d run a race. Maybe he had.

Her knees went momentarily weak with relief, and she gripped the railing with her free hand just to stay upright. Just for a moment, and then Hector asked again to know who Ava Lyon was, and to call his lawyer, and the business of the world reasserted itself.

She looked over at Amenadiel.

“Can you-”

Amenadiel nodded, looking still slightly punch-drunk. “I- I need to talk to my brother. I need to know-”

“Of course,” Chloe said, and then, softer. “I’m sorry. About your mom.”

She didn’t know if it was a lie or not - for the Goddess, the individual she’d come to know, or at least to scratch the surface of, she wasn’t sorry. For his and Lucifer’s mother, she was.

“You don’t need to-” Amenadiel broke off. “Thank you, Chloe.”

Chloe swallowed, and tugged Hector, not ungently, away. “Come on. You can have your phone call once we’re at the precinct.”

With Bianca Ruiz’s assets still unfrozen, and far less solid evidence against him, he might even get out in front of this. She didn’t know what she thought of that. She had to lay out the whole story in front of him as they made their way off the pier, to meet Dan and the small army of squad cars that had turned up at the words ‘bomb threat’. They were going to have to do a lot of fast-talking to get around that one, Chloe thought. And in the end, it hadn’t even been necessary - no explosions, and only one shot fired. She couldn’t be sorry they’d done it, though, even if it did end up costing her her job.

She handed Hector over to Dan, and the last she saw of him was him being bundled into a squad car, looking very young and very confused and not like a murderer at all. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She wasn’t even sure if it mattered whether he remembered it or not, if Ava Lyon was still dead, and Kathleen Lyon had still lost her sister, and none of those consequences stopped _mattering_ because of anything that could be done to their murderer. All the same, it didn’t sit easily with her, the thought of being tried and convicted and unable to mount a proper defence for actions you had no context for.

Maybe Raguel had thought it was mercy, because go- someone knew that Chloe couldn’t understand half of how celestial beings reasoned these things out, but it didn’t seem like it to Chloe. How were you supposed to make amends for your crimes if you didn’t even know what they were?  
Another conversation to have with Lucifer, if he’d let her.

“So...Hector did it?” Dan asked, looking oddly relieved. “I mean...that makes sense. We sure he didn’t commit both murders? Because the MO was the same, and that’s not a common method of murder.”

“I’m sure.”

Dan looked faintly sick. “I can’t...I can’t believe she’d do all this. I mean...Charlotte’s no angel, but...murder? Bomb threats? Going after Linda? This...this isn’t her.”

“I’m...not sure she was the mastermind here,” Chloe said awkwardly. “I mean...the bomb threat was definitely a fake. She admitted that when we caught up with her. Makes me wonder how much more of her confession she was lying about.”

“Yeah?” Dan looked almost relieved. “I just...I can’t come up with anything that makes all of this make sense. And the weirdest thing of all is...you seemed to know this was coming. You in on something I don’t know about, Chlo?”

It tasted like ash and bile, to look him in the eye and lie. “No. I just...happened to catch a break this time.”

Dan huffed out a low laugh. “Right.” Chloe looked past him, to where Charlotte Richards’ body was being carried past on a stretcher, and wondered who would be occupying it, when she woke up. “So...you think Ruiz was faking it?”

Chloe shook her head. “I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”

“Amnesia. When did our lives turn into a goddamn soap opera?”

Palmetto, Chloe wanted to say, but right now, that felt like a bridge too far, kicking Dan when he was down. She shrugged instead, and watched as the paramedics loaded Charlotte’s body into the back of an ambulance, wondering whether she would ever have enough answers to know if they’d made the right calls.

* * *

It was dark by the time the scene was locked down enough that Chloe could break away and look for Lucifer.

She found him on the beach, staring out across the Pacific. He’d discarded his jacket at some point, and she could almost see the shadows of his bruises through the white shirt underneath.

“Hey,” she said awkwardly, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets and shifting uneasily in place. “...you okay?”

Lucifer let out a long, shuddering breath. “...I’ve been worse,” he said at last, dry.

“And...your mom?”

“Gone. You needn’t worry about her any more, Detective. The only person left in that body now is Charlotte Richards herself.”

Chloe couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so she just nodded, her heart in her throat. There were too many questions she wanted to ask.

“What’ll happen to Charlotte?” Lucifer asked, after a moment.

“Given her firm’s record, probably not much,” Chloe admitted. “It’d only be our word against hers that we had a confession, and the evidence is pretty flimsy anyway. Dan was already hoping that both murders were Hector’s fault.”

“Do you propose to let him?”

“No.” Chloe rubbed her face. “It...it doesn’t seem fair. Especially as I’m pretty sure Charlotte - the real Charlotte - won’t ever see the inside of a courtroom anyway.” She paused, and then. “...what your brother did to Hector-”

“Ah. He’s dead, then.”

“What? No!” Chloe stared at him. “You expected- He’s alive, it’s just...it’s strange. He doesn’t seem to remember...any of it. Not the murders, not…” she shook her head. “He- Raguel said that he took Hector’s sin away. What...what did he mean? He can’t...can he have actually brought Ava back…?”

“Raguel?” Lucifer snorted. “Hardly. _Taking_ life is easy. Even animals can do it. _Restoring_ it...that’s for Dad to do. Or, apparently, Sabrina.”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face then, and Chloe remembered that word, _harbinger_ , and the threats that had gone with it. It seemed a world away, now.

“...was it true?” she asked. “Could she really-”

Lucifer’s mouth twisted. “You know I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Lucifer, if this really is the end of the world we’re looking at-”

“What?” Lucifer demanded, rounding on her. “You’re going to go after her too? I’d like to see you try-”

“Of _course_ not!” Chloe snapped back, glaring up at him. “I told you, she’s just a _kid_. And she hasn’t done anything wrong. Well, not about any of this, anyway.”

In Greendale...was another question. There was a lot there that Chloe didn’t know the full truth about, and maybe never would. She didn’t know how to begin asking half her questions, and probably wouldn’t get the chance.

Lucifer was very still.

“...it might,” he admitted, very grudgingly. “She could only do it before because the apocalypse was coming. The next time she tried it it almost knocked her out, and that was just to heal someone still alive. I thought she was drawing power from something tied to the apocalypse, tapped out the battery. But then why would it come back now?”

Chloe stared at him. “...you really don’t know?”

“It’s not as if I’ve ever been in this situation before, is it?” Lucifer said snidely. “The original nephilim were only half-grigori, and they carved out an empire before Mum drowned them all. Dad alone knows what Sabrina’s going to be capable of.”

He sounded at once glowingly proud and sadder than she had ever heard him before.

Chloe shook her head. “I don’t...I need to know what I’m dealing with. If- If you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll go to Amenadiel, or- I’m going to bet Raguel is still in LA. But I need to know. Because this- This wasn’t the first case of ours that had some supernatural bullshit going on behind the scenes. God, how- Can you at least tell me that I’ve never arrested someone who wasn’t guilty because of supernatural circumstances beyond their control?”

Lucifer didn’t even snark about not bringing his father into things, which was answer enough.

“...I have.”

“Just the once,” Lucifer said quickly, “And the case was thrown out as clear self-defence before it ever got to trial.”

“Corrina,” Chloe realised. She’d half-forgotten that case, and how Azrael’s Blade tied into it. “And that...that was the only time?”

Lucifer nodded.

“Good. That’s good.” Chloe closed her eyes. “...I know you’re leaving soon, but- What are the odds that LA is going to stop having cases like this? I mean, we’ve got Raguel running around, for one thing.”

“And Amenadiel, and Maze,” Lucifer agreed, an odd note to his voice. “No shortage of supernatural bullshit in LA, even without me.”

Chloe nodded. “Then I need to know what to do about it. You don’t- I’m not asking you to forgive me. Or- I am asking you to do that, but....this doesn’t have anything to do with that. But if you’re going to be leaving, then someone here needs to know how to deal with cases like this.”

“It’s not...certain...yet,” Lucifer said awkwardly. “That I’m leaving, I mean. I’ll have to talk it over with my spawn first. She might not want me that close by, given how much of a target just being around me has made her.”

Chloe’s heart leapt for a moment, then fell at the memory of the way Lucifer and Sabrina had clung to each other in the hospital. After a trauma like this, Sabrina would want her father. And Boston wasn’t _that_ near Greendale, if that was what Lucifer was worried about.

“That’s…” she groped for words. “I mean…” she huffed a breath. “I’ll miss you, if you go, but...she’s your kid. If you want to be closer to her, then you should move. But...can you explain this to me first? I don’t ever want to be in this mess again. I understood about half of what happened today, and that’s assuming I was right about all my guesses. I can’t _work_ like this.”

Lucifer was frowning at her now, a little furrow between his brows, as if he was trying to figure out her angle. Would anything be enough to prove she’d meant it? That it really had just been panic and lack of evidence and nothing more that had led to what she’d said, and what she’d nearly done.

It could’ve been a lot worse, she told herself. Of course, it could’ve been a lot better, too. She _could_ have listened from the start. ‘Could’ wasn’t up to much. And ‘sorry’ was, at the end of the day, just another word.

“...that’s the only reason you want to know? So you can handle any more cases like this on your own?”

Chloe shrugged. “I...you said it yourself, that this was going to be our last case together. And if you’re going to Boston, then-”

“Well, I was expecting a bit more nervous panic about how to spot celestial beings in future, maybe some tips on how to deal with us.” He grinned mirthlessly, all teeth. “I’ll tell you now, it’s not as easy as that show Ella likes makes it look. Only one special angel-killing blade in all of reality, and _that’s_ out of the picture.”

“Wait- the sword…” Chloe stared at him. “You actually destroyed it?”

“Almost all of it. Amenadiel still needs this back.” The grin shifted, becoming something predatory. “Disappointed?”

“No-! I’m relieved, you-” Chloe cut herself off. “And...Azrael’s Blade?”

“Gone.”

“Good. That’s…that’s good. And that’s it? The only thing that could…”

Lucifer looked decidedly shifty now. “Not...the only thing,” he hedged. “If Father did get it into his head to try his hand at smiting again, say…”

“But other than that…” Chloe cut herself off. It was- It was ridiculous. The whole time that she’d thought Lucifer was just- lying, or delusional, or using an elaborate story as a coping mechanism or just trolling the whole damn world for all she knew, she’d accepted the risks he ran as a given, same as they were for her. Now that she knew he was, theoretically, immortal, she was worried about the one thing that could actually kill him. And there was more to it than that - the choking horror of people being truly _gone_ , which was somehow so much worse now that she knew it only happened to a few - but that was the heart of it.

“Detective?” 

Chloe shook her head. “It’s...nothing, I just- I’m glad it’s over.”

The silence that followed was very still, and very full of unsaid things.

Lucifer looked away first.

“Yes...well....I should get back to the hospital. My spawn will probably have noticed that the west coast hasn’t gone up in flames, but a bit of extra reassurance never hurt anything.”

“That’s...probably a good idea, yeah.”

Chloe should go home too - pick Trixie up from Olga’s, and begin to figure out how to explain everything that has happened, because there was no question of keeping this from her. It sounded almost more exhausting than staying here, on this beach, in the dark, while somebody else worried about how to explain all of this to the higher-ups. 

As it was, she had a report to write. The second falsified report of her whole career. And, now she knew, it probably would not be the last.

“Detective,” Lucifer said, so quiet that Chloe almost couldn’t hear it.

She looked up to meet his eyes. He looked- Awkward, nervous, as uncomfortable in his skin as she felt. It had been so close to comfortable, working together when the Goddess remained to be dealt with. Now, the gap between them felt all the wider.

“...thank you.”

Chloe shrugged. “It’s not as though I did much.”

Everything important, after all, had taken place in that one frozen moment between the gun going off and her eyes opening.

“You came up with the evacuation plan.”

“Would it have saved anyone, if- If things had gone wrong?” Chloe asked. She needed to _know_.

“Not sure.” Lucifer shrugged, and looked away again, out to sea. “Not like anyone’s ever had to deal with anything like this before, is it?”

“...I guess. You all sounded pretty certain, though.”

Lucifer grimaced. “Mostly educated guesswork. That much power, that small a shell…” he made a vague ‘exploding’ gesture. “But since Mum and I haven’t been talking, there was no way of knowing how powerful she was. Not anywhere near all of it,” he added quickly. “Or she’d have already burst. Probably not even at half-power yet, if my hellion could-” he broke off, and Chloe knew they were both thinking the same thing.

Sabrina, who had brought Linda back from the dead and might have inadvertently kicked off the End of Days doing it. That was one scenario Chloe had never come up with, even in all her conspiracy-theorising. She’d always imagined it would have to be a conscious choice, somehow, that good intentions couldn’t lead to awful consequences, despite knowing better. Not...an attempt to do the right thing, that hadn’t even gone wrong, that had worked as intended, and had bigger consequences than had ever been intended.

“Lucifer,” Chloe said quietly, fervently. “You know-” she stopped, and started again. “I know I have...that I’ve said some...awful things. And that I was going to- That I betrayed your trust. But- Please believe me when I say, I would never, _ever_ hurt Sabrina. Any more than you would hurt Trixie. _Please_ tell me you know that.”

“I know.” 

Lucifer didn’t look around at her, but his voice was steady, and he didn’t hesitate in answering. 

“...good. That’s- And you? How...how are you coping with...everything.”

Lucifer didn’t reply. When she snuck a sideways look at him, his jaw was tight and the look on his face-

Chloe had only seen him look like that once before. When he’d turned up to a case unshaven and smelling of booze and hollow-eyed, and she’d never wanted to see him like that again. This was only a shadow of what that had been, but it was there all the same, and Chloe’s stomach twisted again, wondering if, if she asked, he would tell her why-

She opened her mouth to ask, but before she could form the words, her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she broke off. A reminder text from Olga that it was getting late, and since that roommate of hers wasn’t home yet, could she please ask somebody to come and take over for her watching Trixie as soon as could be arranged.

“I have to go,” she said, shoving the phone back into her pocket. “G- He- _Fuck_ , I don’t know how I’m going to explain any of this to Trixie.”

Trix was still recovering from what had happened at the church, after all, and even if she hadn’t been present for any of this, another trauma, even a second-hand one, couldn’t help matters. She rubbed her eyes, and looked back at Lucifer.

“...we’ll talk again?” she asked, unable to stop herself from hoping.

Lucifer looked almost bewildered, but he nodded, and with that, she would have to be satisfied.

Chloe barely remembered the rest of that night. She knew, logically, that she must have gone and said something to the gathered officers, must have left the scene, must have driven home and found Trixie having fallen asleep on the sofa trying to wait up for her, and put a blanket over her, now she was getting too big to carry back to bed, but she didn’t remember anything between leaving the beach and drawing a blanket over Trixie, her mind an exhausted blank, and then falling into bed...only to be woken in the small hours of the morning by the ringing of her phone.

Blindly, she groped for it in the darkness, and fumbled it to her ear.

“‘Lo? Decker speaking.”

The voice on the other end was Maze’s. “Is Lucifer with you?”

Chloe groaned and knuckled at her eyes. “No? Why would he be? Is he not at the penthouse?”

“Second place I looked.” 

“Tried the hospital?” Chloe suggested muzzily. She would not have put it past Lucifer to decide to camp out in Sabrina’s hospital room until he was quite sure there wouldn’t be a third attempt to kill her by yet another faction of his or her enemies as yet unknown. Chloe wasn’t even sure it wasn’t warranted, given the sheer number of factions that had at some point wanted Sabrina dead.

“That was the first place I looked. Nobody else has seen him either, I thought you two might be making it up.”

“...at…” Chloe squinted at the clock. “Two in the morning- _No._ No. I can _hear_ you grinning, Maze. No. We- Go- Fu- shit, I have _got_ to find some new expletives, but we aren’t- I’m not sure we’re even friends anymore. Uh….are you sure he isn’t-”

“His car’s still outside the hospital, and the Princess is pitching a fit. Hate to leap to conclusions, but-”

“He’s missing,” Chloe concluded. “We’ll be right there.”


End file.
